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BEHIND THE BATTLE LINE 
AROUND THE WORLD IN 1918 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

MBW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNB 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TOXONTO 




EMMELINE PETHICK-LAWRENCE 



BEHIND THE BATTLE 
LINE 

AROUND THE WORLD IN 1918 



BY 

MADELEINE Z. DOTY 



ILLUSTRATED 



j!3eU) gotk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1918 



AU rights reserved 






Copyright 1918 bt International Magazine 
Company ; by the McCall Company ; and by the 
Atlantic Monthly Company. 



Copyright. 1918 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, November. 1918 



NOV 14 1918 
©CI.A508122 



TO 

EMMELINE PETHICK-LAWRENCE 

WHO HAS MADE MY DREAM OF GREAT 
WOMEN A REALITY 



PREFACE 

THERE is a great fascination about warring 
Europe. Across the seas a world drama is 
being enacted. One cannot keep away. 
Each year the scene changes. Having seen the first 
act one must see the next. The call came to me. I 
had been to Europe twice since the war. This was 
the third trip. This time I was to go around the 
world. 

I knew that parallel with the physical battle that 
engulfs us, runs a great spiritual struggle. That 
was the drama I was watching. I tried to discover 
the dreams and plans of the women of the future, 
what the folks at home strove for, where the spirit- 
ual drama led. In each country I sought the heart 
of things. I made no attempt to acquire facts and 
figures. In superficial details this book undoubtedly 
has inaccuracies. It is merely a bird's-eye view of a 
mixed up world, with a glimpse of the new spiritual 
order which arises out of the muddle. 

A very important factor in the consideration of 
world affairs is the different stage of development 
of the different nations. To treat of matters inter- 
nationally when one nation is in the Middle Ages and 
another in the Twenty-first Century is almost impos- 
sible. In Japan, for instance, women are openly sold 
into industry and prostitution, and a God sent em- 
peror sits upon the throne. In that land to be a 
member of the Y. W. C. A. was to be a rebel and a 
revolutionist. Japan socially Is In the Middle Ages. 
When I reached Russia on the other hand I found 



Vlll 



PREFACE 



that the working people had seized the government 
and that Maxim Gorky was in danger of imprison- 
ment as a conservative. I had leaped forward into 
the Twenty-first Century. Then I journeyed on to 
Sweden and found a king tottering on his throne. 
Beneath the skirts of a gorgeous palace lay the hovels 
of the poor, and a mass of restless, hungry people 
crying out for bread. I had dropped back to the 
Eighteenth Century. 

When I landed in England it was to step forward 
again to the Twentieth Century. For in spite of a 
king as a figure head, in England the people are 
slowly taking possession of their own. Not as in 
Russia by the force of the bayonet, but through uni- 
versal education and the intellectual intelligence of 
the masses. 

But this uneven state of world development will 
not long continue. In every country exists a group 
of people spiritually awake. They are fighting the 
fight for the new freedom. In a generation the back- 
ward nations will achieve the struggles of centuries 
and be brought up to a Twentieth Century standard 
of democracy. Travel, moving picture shows, the 
mingling of races, the exchange of literature will 
bring new light everywhere. Fifty years from to- 
day kings will have vanished and Parliaments and 
Congresses be the governing force in each nation. 
With the dawn of such a day wars will cease and a 
true internationalism be established. And in this 
new order which arises women are destined to play 
a large part. For in those countries which are most 
advanced women are most active. Above all in new 
democratic England women are standing forth. 
The position of women the world over was a fasci- 
nating line of investigation. In autocratic Japan 
the woman was still a slave. She had no rights, she 



PREFACE ix 

was hardly more than an upper servant. In awaken- 
ing China she was still bound, held by the laws and 
traditions of the past ages, but beneath her bondage 
she began to stir, and here and there to break, through 
her chains. In Russia woman was man's comrade 
and mate. Her womanhood had been cast from 
her for the sake of revolution. She did not seek 
to express herself but instead adopted man's methods 
in the fight for freedom. It is as revolutionists that 
Russian women are famous. In Sweden women 
have taken a wholly different line. The Swedish 
man has refused to let woman be his comrade, has 
made her instead, as in Germany, his house-frau. 
The women thrown back on themselves concen- 
trated on each other and on the sex problem and 
built up a " Miittershutz " program. This concen- 
tration on woman's needs, made the women self- 
expressive and produced the woman genius, Ellen 
Key and Selma Lagerlof. In France on the other 
hand it is neither as comrade or genius that the mod- 
ern woman stands forth, but as a lover. Through 
all the ages the French woman has been past master 
in the art of love. Her work has been achieved 
through some man. She has made no attempt to 
speak for herself. All she possessed was given to 
her lover. Her influence on history has been 
through her amours. It is when we come to Eng- 
land that we find woman more nearly the complete 
human being. Here she combines the striking char- 
acteristics of the other countries. She is a comrade, 
mate and lover, self-expressive, and free. She 
stands forth as the Warrior of the Spirit. It was in 
England where the Labor Party and the women are 
coming into their own that I heard in its full strength 
the glad new song of freedom and brotherhood which 
I have heard faintly everywhere. I knew then that 



X PREFACE 

whatever the outcome on the field of battle the cause 
of democracy had been won. And particularly I 
saw the flowering of the new spiritual beauty .among 
the women, until before my eyes grew a dazzling 
vision of an army of mothers joining hands the world 
around, batding for the rights of the world's chil- 
dren, creating a new and better race of men and 
women, bringing to fruition the kingdom of God 
upon earth. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

P*REFACE vii 

I Autocratic Japan i 

II Awakening China i6 

III Across Siberia 28 

IV Turbulent Russia 40 

V The Husks of Russian Royalty . . .51 

VI Revolutionary Justice 57 

VII The Soviets — Government by the Bol- 

SHEVIKI 74 

VIII " The Germans IN Petrograd " . ... 96 

IX The Women OF Russia 119 

X Materialistic Sweden 130 

XI Vital Norway 151 

XII Inspiring France 162 

(i) Paris Bombarded 

XIII Democratic England — Warrior of the 

Spirit 181 

Conclusion ^95 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Asa Hirooka 12 



The Recent Empress Dowager of China .... 26 

Maxim Gorky and his wife, Marie Andrievna ... 54 

Ellen Key 140 

Viegland's Statue of Camilla Collett 154 

Valentine Thomson 176 



BEHIND THE BATTLE LINES 

CHAPTER I 

AUTOCRATIC JAPAN THE WOMAN SLAVE 

THE big steamer swung out from the dock at 
Vancouver. A drizzly rain concealed the 
beauty of the harbor. My eyes clung to the 
shore. It was my last glimpse of America. Ahead 
lay a big adventure. 

The ship was crowded. There were three per- 
sons in every cabin. People for Russia, India, 
China, and Japan were streaming across the Pacific. 
It was the only safe way. Yet even the Pacific has 
reminders of war. A coat of gray war-paint covers 
the steamer, making it look like a monster cruiser. 
But gay music Hoats from the saloon. A Filipino 
band is playing a two-step. The passengers are 
chatting gayly. As we steam down the harbor we 
take stock of one another. For ten days we must 
live together. 

I find as roommates a Norwegian missionary and 
the wife of a member of the British Legation in 
Peking. The missionaries are numerous; they num- 
ber seventy-two. The steamship people have used 
them as Bibles, and put one in every cabin. The 
other passengers are buyers, bankers, merchants, 
and government officials. It isn't a mixable com- 
pany. Upstairs in the saloon the missionaries 
gather about the piano and sing hymns. On the 



2 Behind the Battle Lines 

deck below fox-trots and bunny-hugs are in progress. 
But the ocean is a great leveler. During the first 
night we encounter a mountainous sea. In the 
morning, missionary and merchant lean over the 
deck-rail in mutual agony. Souls may differ, but 
stomachs are of one brotherhood. 

But the Pacific is not long angry. Unlike the At- 
lantic, a few hours transform it. The turbulent 
surface becomes as smooth as a mill-pond. There 
are days of glowing sunshine. As we steam north 
the air nips and bites. We scurry from the sunny 
spots on deck to the tea-room. In the long unevent- 
ful hours acquaintance ripens into friendship. 

In the cabin across the way is a little Japanese girl. 
For five years she has been in England and America, 
and speaks English perfectly. When she came on 
the ship she was clad in modern European clothes, 
but as the days slip by and the soft air of Asia greets 
us, the slant in her eyes grows more prominent, her 
hair goes up into Japanese puffs, and she appears in 
kimono and obi. 

The journey nears its end — twenty-four hours 
more and it will be over. But even as we sigh with 
content, little black clouds appear in the sky. The 
wireless tells of two typhoons raging off the China 
coast. Spurts of rain and gusts of wind beat against 
the ship. Again we toss and moan. We have 
caught the edge of a storm. But in the evening the 
clouds break. Far off on the horizon, in a golden 
sunset, we see the dark blue hills of Japan. The 
Japanese hurry to the deck. A light breaks through 
their stolid faces. 

That night it is hard to sleep. To-morrow we 
enter the Land of the Rising Sun. 

When I awake in the morning we are already en- 
tering the harbor of Yokohama. I climb onto the 



Autocratic Japan — The Woman Slave 3 

berth and poke my head out of the port-hole. Drops 
of rain fall on my face. I see long, lo^y, \yooden 
docks, and European buildings old and dilapidated. 
We might be arriving in Hoboken or some equally 
ugly American port. 

I fight down my disappointment. Fortunately 
there is no time for thought — all is hurry and bustle 
of departure. 

My cabin-mate, the wife of the member of the 
British Legation, and I decide to travel together. 
She has lived much in the East and was born in 
China. To her the strange customs of the Orient 
are familiar. We collect our luggage and engage 
two rickshaws. Then I experience my first taste of 
Japan. I climb into the miniature, two-wheeled 
buggy, and my little human horse lifts the shafts. 
It is raining, the cover is up, and a rubber blanket is 
buttoned securely across the front opening. I feel 
myself drifting back through the ages. I might be 
some lady emerging from her harem in her sedan 
chair, carefully screened from public gaze. 

The small man pulling me is full of wiry strength. 
He wears short, white knee-pants, and a short blue 
coat. His bare brown legs are shapely. On his feet 
are straw sandals. 

My friend is in a rickshaw somewhere in the rear. 
As I gaze from the tiny peep-holes in my rubber 
covering, again I have pangs of disappointment. I 
see only a narrow street lined with ugly two-story 
European houses. It is the architecture of America 
in its beginning — crude, slipshod, and dingy. 

The hotel is the same. As I step in I feel myself 
back in America, in one of the out-of-date hotels of 
the past generation. The hall is lined with rocking- 
chairs. The wall is covered with gold-framed mir- 
rors and maps. There is red upholstered furniture 



4 Behind the Battle Lines 

and much tawdry glitter. It is the hotel of the com- 
mercial traveler. And this is one of Japan's best. 
The Japanese are renowned as imitators, but they 
often produce a third-rate imitation of the real thing. 
Modern art they do not understand. The things 
they take from Europe they make ugly. 

The next day we leave the hotel to explore. A 
few days before a typhoon had swept over Japan 
— the worst in fifty years. There are bits of wreck- 
age everywhere; tiles from house-roofs, smashed 
windows, and fallen trees. It is not raining, and the 
rubber cover of the rickshaw is down. It is like rid- 
ing in an arm-chair on wheels. The whole city is 
spread out before us. As we turn down a street I 
realize I'm in a new world. We have reached the 
real Japan. Crowds of kimono-clad men and 
women stream past. It is wet, and the men have 
tucked up their skirts. Bare brown legs are every- 
where in evidence among old and young. The bare 
feet are thrust into wooden sandals that clump- 
clump with every step. The dominant note in Japan 
is the clatter, clatter of the wooden sandal, and the 
thud, thud of the rickshaw man's softly-clad feet. 
There is no loud talk and rarely any laughter. The 
Japanese are reserved, steady and charming. Some- 
times one longs to ruffle up their stolidity and get be- 
neath the cool, silent, gracious manner. 

But the surface life possesses endless attraction. 
The Japanese streets are lined with one-story shops 
with sliding latticed windows. By day the entire 
shop-front is open. Inside sits the shopkeeper on 
his mat on the floor, while around him are spread 
his goods. The room is hardly high enough for a 
European, but if you enter you must remove your 
shoes and sit on the floor. 

Nothing in this district is modern. I say " noth- 



Autocratic Japan — The ffoman Slave 5 

ing," but there I err. Coming down the street in 
gaudy kimono is a tiny child, and on its head is an 
American red felt hat. Men and children run riot 
in European hats, but the women still go with uncov- 
ered heads. 

As we move down the street there is one other bit 
of modernity — a moving-picture show. Gaudy 
posters that would do credit to Coney Island wave 
over the door. We leave our rickshaw and step in. 
We do not remove our shoes, but instead encase our 
feet in cloth slippers. 

At first we can see nothing, but we hear the steady 
drone of a voice. A Japanese movie, acted by Jap- 
anese actors, and depicting Japanese life is being 
flashed upon the screen. But a Japanese movie 
usually has little action, for the Japanese seek to hide 
their emotions. They sit for hours, merely nodding, 
frowning or smiling, throughout the most momentous 
events. To make up for the inactivity, the Japanese 
have actors and actresses who speak the lines of the 
silent screen figures. It was this we had heard as we 
entered. 

We find a small bench and sit down. But most of 
the audience sits on the floor — only foreigners and 
domestics use benches. At our feet is a family party 
consisting of father, mother, small son, and maid. 
The child is bubbling over with fun. He seems de- 
voted to his nurse. He clutches her lovingly. 
When her foot is nearer than her hand, it is the big 
toe he grasps. In Japan, feet are as clean and as ex- 
posed as hands. The touch of one seems as satis- 
factory as the other. 

Presently Mother grows restless. Then the little 
maid lights a cigarette, takes a few puffs, and hands 
it to her mistress. Now it is Father's turn. He is 
evidently too hot. He loosens his divided, pleated 



6 Behind the Battle Lines 

skirt and removes it. Men in Japan take off their 
skirts, not their coats, when warm. 

Soon Father has had enough. He arises, rear- 
ranges all his garments, and, his toilet completed, 
moves out. His family meekly follows in the rear 
without question. 

When we leave the theater it is dark. Over every 
shop flashes an electric light, and the street is gay 
with the many-colored lanterns of the rickshaw men. 

We do not linger in Yokohama, but travel the fol- 
lowing day to Tokio, the capital city. Here we de- 
termine not to endure the agony of an out-of-date 
European hotel. 

With the aid of the Japanese Tourist Bureau we 
secure the name of a Japanese inn. Down an ob- 
scure street we find an unpretentious Japanese build- 
ing. When the big, latticed front door is rolled back 
we see our host. He is surrounded by his servants. 
They all kneel, and with hands upon the ground bow 
low. Our little kimono-clad maid takes us to our 
room. It is bright and airy, and spotless. The lat- 
tice-screen windows are rolled back. The whole 
room is exposed to sun and air. Below is a tiny gar- 
den. Our room has little in it — a low table which 
is the right height when we are seated upon the floor, 
a tiny table writing-desk of the same height, two silk 
mats to sit upon, and a dressing-table that looks like 
a doll's bureau. 

In one corner is a small alcove. Here stands 
a vase of flowers, and over it hangs a Japanese scroll. 
It is the room's one bit of decoration. The sim- 
plicity and sweet cleanliness are infinitely restful. 
We sit down upon our cushions in content. 

Our small maid serves our meals in our room. A 
lacquered tray set with dainty dishes is put before us 
on the table. The food is appetizing — my friend 



Autocratic Japan — The JVoman Slave 7 

eats it all. I confine myself to the cooked fish, roast 
chestnuts, rice, and delicious tea. We soon become 
experts with the chop sticks. 

At night sliding wall-screens are rolled back, re- 
vealing a cupboard. Here our bedding is tucked 
away. Two wadded quilts are spread upon the 
floor, and over these a sheet. Then comes the cov- 
ering — a red silk eider-down puff. 

We soon get adjusted to sleeping on the floor. 
The only real trial at the inn are the toilet facilities. 
There is a common wash-room, with brass basins all 
in a row. Here men and women wash at the same 
time. But our little maid, knowing our weakness, 
shoos off intruders while we make our toilet. Next 
the wash-room is the bath. It has a stone floor with 
a large sink. This sink has a fire under it, and the 
water sizzles with heat. But you do not step im- 
mediately into this tub. You wash yourself thor- 
oughly first at a small wooden bucket. When you 
have removed every trace of dirt and soap, you take 
a hasty plunge. You must be careful to be spotless, 
for the water in this tank is emptied only once a day, 
and if you leave traces behind, the next one who takes 
a bath will be indignant. 

We return to our room invigorated by the intense 
heat of the bath, and find our breakfast waiting for 
us. Our bedding has been tucked away, and the 
room put in order. The Japanese live in a small 
space. Life's necessities are hidden behind screens. 
One room without furniture serves as bedroom, sit- 
ting-room, and dining-room. The rooms of the 
poor as well as the rich are kept spotless. The 
wooden floors of the halls shine from constant pol- 
ishing, but beneath the immaculate neatness of the 
surface lies the refuse. This dirt and the ugly Euro- 
pean innovations are the two blights of Japan. 



8 Behind the Battle Lines 

There is an electric light in our room covered with 
a cheap white shade. Everywhere is the incongru- 
ous mixture of ancient charm and modern ugliness. 
The two streams run side by side in parallel columns, 
never merging. In school the children sit on ugly 
uncomfortable benches. At home they use charm- 
ing floor-mats. In the office men wear ill-fitting 
European clothes, and when they reach home change 
to the attractive silk kimono. The Japanese have 
adopted modern inventions but failed to grasp the 
civilization and beauty of spirit of the West. They 
are lacking in democracy. This is seen in their treat- 
ment of women. The women are still living the life 
of the Middle Ages. 

In my ignorance I talked of woman suffrage. But 
suffrage is reserved for a favored few. Only a tenth 
of the male population has the vote. Japan is an 
autocracy. It has just emerged from feudalism. 
Its whole life is built on loyalty to the emperor. 

The women are voiceless. They can not attend 
political meetings. They are the women of Jane 
Austen's novels — meek and submissive. They 
obey their husbands as lord and master. It is their 
duty to serve. In their homes they occupy the posi- 
tion of upper servants. Socially they have no life. 
When they appear in public they stand, not by the 
side of their husbands, but to one side. They wear 
tight kimonos and walk with mincing steps. They 
can not run away. Woman is frankly considered 
man's inferior. The girl's education is not the same 
as the boy's. To-day girls' schools are increasing. 
There are several exceptionally fine ones — among 
the best and earliest that of Miss Suda. But the 
portion educated is small. Few girls go beyond the 
grammar school, and the typical high school for girls 
limits the education to sewing and etiquette. The 



Autocratic Japan — The Woman Slave 9 

husband does not wish a companion. He desires a 
housekeeper. 

When the husband enters the house, the wife, 
kneeling, places three fingers of her hands upon the 
floor and bows low. The serving-maid, when she 
waits upon you, must also kneel and bow. Foreign 
men who travel in Japan, seem to delight in this cus- 
tom. As a young American facetiously remarked: 
" This is the place to bring a wife on a honeymoon. 
Here she learns how to behave." 

The marriage customs are degrading. The mar- 
riage is arranged by parents or a go-between. Fre- 
quently the young couple do not see each other until 
man and wife. To love one another before mar- 
riage is considered immoral. It is a duty to wed. 
Love and romance must not enter in. Divorce, on 
the other hand, is obtainable by either party in case 
of mutual consent, but in practice the wife never gets 
a divorce. It would be unseemly. But when the 
husband wearies he always wrings consent from the 
wife. Then he registers the divorce and is free. 

So completely is the wife, man's possession, that 
queer customs arise. In certain districts women 
blacken their teeth when married. This makes them 
unattractive to men. That it may also make them 
unattractive to their husband is of small moment. 
Widows often shave the head when the husband dies. 
Formerly unmarried women had to arrange their 
hair in one fashion, and married women in another. 
At a glance you could distinguish their state. This 
was convenient for men. But industrialism is driv- 
ing out this custom. Probably employers object to 
the labeling of their employees. Embarrassing 
questions might arise. For in spite of woman's low 
social status she is everywhere working. The pay 
she receives is a trifle. In one packing-house the 



10 Behind the Battle Lines 

wage for women was $3.50 a month. For man the 
same labor brought $15. And even the woman's 
meager earnings are not her own. Before she 
marries, the wages go to her parents. After mar- 
riage, unless she has registered her claim, which she 
rarely does, the husband receives the wages. 

Japan's industrial development has brought in- 
creasing trials for women. In certain cases young 
daughters are literally sold to an employer for a 
term of three years. They become prisoners. 
They eat and sleep in the factory, and may never 
leave it. Physically and morally, conditions are in- 
tolerable. So bad are they that it is said that a 
district can not be recruited for girl-workers more 
than once. The wrecks who return to their parents 
are so pitiable that even the most avaricious parents 
will not consent to the slaughter. Tuberculosis and 
prostitution claim fifty per cent. Woman's degra- 
dation has spread immorality in Japan. In every 
large city there is a segregated district. Young girls 
are sold by their parents for a three- or five-year 
period of bondage. It is contended that many girls 
enter this profession willingly; that they tire of home 
life and its restrictions, and think anything else pref- 
erable. But these houses of shame have bars. A 
girl can not get away. A wall surrounds the district, 
and a soldier stands at the gate. Once inside, there 
is no escape. 

Nor is the fate of the geisha girl much better. 
She, it is true, is free. She may wander forth. But 
she enters the tea-house in her 'teens. One night 
three girls danced for us, gay children dressed in 
gaudy kimonos with painted faces. They ranged in 
age from thirteen to sixteen. When the dance was 
over they went to play with their dolls. These chil- 
dren are the playthings of man. Their life is given 



I 



Autocratic Japan — The Woman Slave 1 1 

to his entertainment, and if he fancies one of these 
babies she is his. 

Under such conditions women can not prosper. 
Their welfare is not considered. The mothers of 
Japan grow old young. They know little about 
child-hygiene. Often they nurse their young until 
they are four or five years of age. This ignorance 
of the mothers results in national disaster. Infant 
mortality is enormous. Japan will never be a nation 
of the first rank with such a handicap. She may pos- 
sess military strength, but internally she is weak. In 
a prolonged war against a civilized country she could 
not survive. At home she would crack, crumble, and 
collapse. Her women could not take the place of 
men. They have not the will-power or the initia- 
tive. They can not stand alone. They have been 
made a race of obedient servants and children. 

But there are women in Japan who are awake. 
To them conditions are intolerable. They bleed for 
their sisters. These women are few in number, but 
their voice grows loud. As yet they are not organ- 
ized, but here and there one arises to fling out her 
protest. 

The nearest approach to united action is carried 
on under the auspices of the Y. W. C. A. Here Jap- 
anese women who have become Christians meet and 
work together. I was present at a business meeting. 
The chairman, secretary, and treasurer were all Jap- 
anese. They conducted the meeting well. These 
women are rebels. They long to change their coun- 
try's customs. Their demands are humble. There 
is no talk of suffrage. That is an impossible dream 
when male suffrage does not even exist. They 
clamor for social and political equality, by which they 
mean the right to attend political meetings, to appear 
in public with their husbands, and to be treated as 



12 Behind the Battle Lines 

equals, to be given the same education as men, and, 
most cherished of all desires, to possess the privilege 
of choosing their own husbands. 

The twenty-five graduates from American colleges 
find life hard In Japan, but with Infinite wisdom the 
majority devote themselves to the fight for universal 
education. Occasionally some rebel Is not content 
with such sane methods. She gathers friends about 
her and founds a society. One such group, compris- 
ing fifty or sixty members, Is called the " Blue Stock- 
ings." Their object Is to defy man and refuse mat- 
rimony. To remain unmarried In Japan Is to be 
an outcast. Such behavior brings disgrace. There 
Is, however, to-day one old woman who boasts 
proudly that she Is the first " old maid " of Japan. 
But nature Is strong. The " Blue Stockings " do not 
Increase In number. As fast as members join, others 
are graphically described as " throwing down their 
pens to become good wives and wise mothers." 

But even Japan can not kill the spirit of genius. 
It will always arise triumphant. That accounts for 
Asa HIrooka. The strength of her personality 
broke the bonds of suppression. As a girl she stud- 
ied and read. The only English books translated 
into Japanese she could find were on banking. 
These she devoured. At twenty-four she mar- 
ried. Her family's fortune was then falling. 
Bankruptcy lay ahead. Then this young woman 
stepped In, and grappled with the worn-out methods 
of the old bank. She applied the methods of her 
books on English banking. To-day the Mitsui 
Banks, scattered throughout the land, are far-famed. 

A woman who can make a fortune is not to be 
scorned. She was given her freedom, but called a 
crank. 

Nor did her work cease with the bank. She de- 




ASA HIROOKA 



Autocratic Japan — The JVoman Slave 13 

veloped as well the mining interests of her family. 
Clad in bloomers and with a pistol in her belt, she 
went into the mines and ordered the men about. 
Here was a woman the Japanese man could not defy 
or tame. Through an interpreter she told me her 
story. " Japanese women," she said, " need to be 
awakened. They need to develop strong wills. 
They are weak. They have no rights — no prop- 
erty rights — no rights even over their own children. 
But little by little a change is coming. The Japanese 
man begins to realize that a nation can not be great 
without the support of its women. Even its military 
strength will fail. Men laughed at me at first and 
said that I was crazy, but now they listen. There 
can be no true Internationalism until women are free. 
Only when men and women stand shoulder to shoul- 
der can the nations of the world unite." 

As I listened to this fine old woman I forgot where 
I was. Asa Hirooka is 67. Her face is stamped 
with lines, and her hair is gray, but the slant in her 
eyes has lost its prominence. There is no meekness 
in her manner. Clad in European clothes, she might 
have sprung from any land. Vital energy and a 
burning spirit are her dominant characteristics. 

When I left, we walked toward the door together 
— she with a free stride and her hands pushed into 
her coat pockets. I glanced down and found my 
own hands buried deep in my pockets. The habits 
and manners of East and West had become the same. 
We were from no country and of no sex — merely 
human beings talking together. I looked up at her 
and smiled. She caught my meaning. Our hands 
sought each other in a long clasp. A few more such 
women and Japan will be a new country. I went 
away with a lighter heart. Such a spirit is bound to 
bear fruit. 



14 Behind the Battle Lines 

But the day had come for our departure. For 
two days we journeyed through the land. Our train 
sHd past the Inland Sea — that stretch of vivid blue 
water, whose shore-line is studded with shapely 
mountains possessing a beauty almost unnatural. It 
is an idealized version of beautiful Lake Geneva for 
mile after mile, until the eye grows weary with such 
continuous exquisite loveliness. It is just the spot 
for romance, and one was blossoming in our car be- 
fore our very eyes. A Japanese train is a miniature 
affair. It runs on a narrow-gauge track. It fits a 
European hardly better than a toy train. The cars 
in form are like those of America — open the entire 
length, but the seats run lengthwise. When a Japa- 
nese enters, he slips off his shoes and curls up on his 
feet on the seat. Men and women present much the 
appearance of children kneeling on the car seat to 
look out the windows. Opposite us was a newly 
married couple. They were curled up on the seat 
gazing out of the window. Occasionally they stole 
shy glances at each other. Their faces at the win- 
dow grew closer together. Then his face rested 
against the window-sill. Audaciously she leaned 
over and dropped a kiss on the back of his neck. 
Then the guard entered, and they flew apart, to be- 
come absorbed in the problem of the window-shade. 
It was my one glimpse into the heart of Japan. For 
the Japanese are intensely reserved. However vol- 
canic beneath, the life on the surface is unruffled. 
Their emotions, like their scenery, are perfectly or- 
dered and planned. 

I bade good-by to this dainty land with regret. It 
has a subtle charm. There was peace in its quaint 
gardens, with their tiny lakes, miniature bridges, and 
gnarled and twisted green trees. The smell of san- 
dalwood and incense was in my nostrils. Yet be- 



Autocratic Japan — The Woman Slave 15 

neath Its clean, bright beauty I had discovered sore 
spots. No city in the land has sewers. Its drains 
are not emptied. At night when the houses are 
closed foul odors rise. Disease fills the land, and 
along with the physical vileness goes the moral ill. 
The women are in bondage. 



CHAPTER II 

AWAKENING CHINA THE BOUND WOMAN 

AFTER a night of tossing, the small Japanese 
boat landed us on the Corean shore. Gone 
was the miniature loveliness, the superficial 
cleanliness, the smooth running life of Japan. The 
Corean peninsula is a stretch of flat, sandy waste 
with mountainous ridges, the little town Fusan, at 
which we landed, unspeakably dirty, the buildings 
crude and ugly. The population is a mixture of lean, 
tall Chinamen in shirt and trousers, the short, black- 
haired Japanese in kimonos, and the big Corean In 
long baggy white bloomers and short white Eton- 
shaped jacket with a hiatus of flesh between trousers 
and jacket, and a small black hat, one-third the size 
of a high silk hat, perched on the side of the head. 
But it was the faces I studied. 

The Corean, unlike the yellow men. Is brown- 
skinned with heavily lined features. He looks like 
an ancient patriarch. That is the outstanding im- 
pression of Corea, the expressive faces of its inhabit- 
ants. In bearded and beardless faces shines the 
wisdom of the prophet. It seemed a sacrilege that 
the pigmy Japanese should be ordering this venerable 
patriarch about. But Japan Intends to dominate 
Corea. In material achievements she Is making 
great progress. The best railways that Japan pos- 
sesses are in this peninsula. Besides the daily ex- 
presses there Is a weekly train de luxe. It is equal 

i6 



Awakening China — The Bound Woman 17 

to the Twentieth Century Limited between New 
York and Chicago. There are drawing-room cars, 
dining cars, observation cars and two berth compart- 
ment sleeping cars. Japan itself can boast of no 
such elegance in travel. Half way up the peninsula 
is Seoul, the capital. Here I spent a couple of days. 
The official hotel like the train was superior to any 
other in the East. It has elaborately tiled bathrooms, 
smooth running elevators, central heating and electric 
lights. In addition it has features possessed by no 
other hotel. In the same corridor with the velvet 
carpeted bedrooms with their single brass beds, stand 
rows of typical, paper screened Japanese rooms, 
empty except for the matting on the floor, a couple of 
silk mats to sit on, and a low table. Whether you 
come from East or West your needs are suited. 
Materially the Japanese are remaking Corea. But 
the material magnificence will not conquer the Corean 
spirit any more than Japan can ultimately conquer 
China. The people of China and Corea are indi- 
vidualists. They think and reason for themselves. 
The Japanese have become efficient machines. In 
the East as in the West there is the same struggle of 
individualism and democracy against mechanical effi- 
ciency and autocracy. 

It took two days and a night to travel through the 
sandy wastes and mud huts of Corea. The climate 
was dry and arid, like our far West. There are 
few trees. 

After we reached Mukden we passed into Chinese 
territory. Immediately a great change took place. 
For the Chinese and Japanese are as unHke as the 
Russian and the German. The neat orderly little 
Japanese stations with brass basins all in a row on the 
station platform, where one washed in public, disap- 
peared. The Chinese station was a shack. It was 



1 8 Behind the Battle Lines 

dirty, but it overflowed with humanity. The air was 
filled with shrill chatter. The crowd poured into the 
train gesticulating and eager. It was pandemonium 
let loose. They had everything to sell from whole 
fried chickens to preserved fruit on sticks. The 
sand of the desert sifted over the food, dirty fingers 
touched it, but rich and poor alike bought and ate. 
In spite of the dirt and confusion, I breathed again. 
I felt as I did in 191 6, when I escaped from Germany 
into France. I loved the humanity and democracy 
of it. I had felt suffocated in Japan. China is big 
and open and at the core sound. Beneath the super- 
stitions and ancient customs the people are fighting 
for freedom. The laws and customs are as barbar- 
ous as those of Japan. A woman may not see her 
husband before marriage. The man may have as 
many concubines as he pleases. Half the women 
still have bound feet. Legally the woman is every- 
where the inferior of man. But in practice these 
things are becoming obsolete. The change is visible 
in the new attitude towards women. In the train 
was a young married couple. The woman talked 
and flirted gayly with her husband. He lighted a 
cigarette and gave it to her and she smoked. There 
was no attempt to keep this lady in the background. 
The man was humbly attentive. 

For a day and a night we joggled and bounced 
over a bad roadbed in our shabby Chinese train. At 
night a bundle of bedclothes was tossed in and we 
spread these on the slippery sofas. There were no 
regular sleeping cars. At ten in the morning we 
pulled into Peking. My first impression was one of 
keen disappointment. As I passed under the great 
wall I stepped into paved streets with European 
buildings and high walls. No wonder the Chinese 
fear Europeans. The first mile of their city belongs 



Awakening China — The Bound Woman 19 

to foreign embassies. I stayed at the British Em- 
bassy. It was indeed lovely, with its smooth lawns 
and green trees and low buildings. Like a bit of 
England dumped down into a high-walled enclosure 
with Hindu soldiers at every gate. But I had a 
sense of resentment, a feeling that I was being shut 
away from the East. I kept asking, " Where is 
China ? " It was not until the second day that I dis- 
covered the real Peking. Out beyond the Embassy 
I journeyed in a rickshaw. We turned into a long 
avenue that leads to the Forbidden City and the 
Palace of the Former Emperors. The high wall 
shut out the palace buildings. But the tiled yellow 
roofs rose above the wall. They glistened in the 
sunhght like bits of the sun itself. The impressive 
gateways were buildings and their dashes of red, blue 
and yellow tiling lent color and character to every- 
thing. 

We passed under the great wall through the gate- 
way that separated the palace from the real Peking. 
Here at last was China. Such life, such activity. 
Hurrying in every direction were thousands of rick- 
shaws. Down one side of the road ran the little 
human horses, pulling their light two-wheeled car- 
riages, and up the other side came another stream, 
and above the sound of the pattering feet rose 
the shrill cries of the rickshaw men as they warned 
one another of their approach. On the narrow 
sidewalk moved throngs of people, men, women 
and children, all dressed in trousers and shirts. 
Even the tiny children wore trousers. There is no 
babyhood stage. There is a jump from swaddling 
clothes to trousers. In every shop purchaser and 
storekeeper were bargaining shrilly. One never 
pays the original price asked. The entire front of 
the one-story shop is open. The interior is com- 



20 Behind the Battle Lines 

pletely exposed to the public view. One sees the 
activity of the street, the activity of every house and 
hears the hum and chatter of thousands of voices. 
It is a moving-picture show on a gigantic scale. One 
never gets through looking, looking. Many of the 
wares for sale are European. There are great sup- 
plies of soap, perfumery, powder, clothes, hats, even 
shoes, tables, chairs, and dishes. For China is more 
modern than Japan in its daily habits. The Chinese 
have been sitting on chairs and eating at tables for 
ages. They still sleep on a raised stone platform 
called a " kong." In winter this " kong " is heated 
by a fire beneath it. But the Japanese sit and sleep 
on the floor. 

It is easy for a European to live in a modern Chi- 
nese home. There are books to read, couches to 
recline on, chairs to sit on, tablecloths on the tables, 
and gay eager talk. 

In Japan, on the contrary, one lives in an empty 
room, sits on a silk mat, gazes at a beautiful scrool 
or vase, and kneeling bows to a bowing host whose 
head bumps the floor. 

One night I went to a Chinese restaurant. It was 
one of the best. It stood among the row of shops. 
On the outside it looked like a one-story brick tene- 
ment with an entrance that led into a back alley. 
All Chinese streets in the crowded districts resemble 
slum alleys. The first room we entered was the 
kitchen. Two or three stoves were belching forth 
heat. The cooks with pigtails were hurrying madly 
about. One could stop and watch preparations. 
But it didn't seem wise. There were dirt and flies 
in abundance. From the kitchen one stepped into a 
little courtyard. Around this yard were numerous 
rooms. The arrangement was similar to that of the 
houses of ancient Rome. 



Awakening China — The Bound JVoman 21 

Each party had a dining-room to themselves. 
There was no general eating place. Our party con- 
sisted of a secretary of the British Legation and his 
wife, four Chinamen and two Chinese women and 
myself. One of the Chinese women wore elabor- 
ately embroidered satin trousers and shirt, while her 
husband was clad in an ordinary American business 
suit. The other Chinese woman and her husband 
wore the garments of the West, but the kind of gar- 
ments that one buys in the Bowery. Husband had 
an untieable tie and a celluloid collar. The two re- 
maining Chinamen were dressed in native costumes. 
One was a professor, the other a student just re- 
turned from Columbia University. The whole 
party talked English fluently. There was little 
embarrassment and no formality. We were soon 
in eager discussion. It isn't customary for Chinese 
women to dine in public with men. But to-day it is 
being done. 

We sat at a large round table. Our seats were 
elaborately carved stools such as one uses sometimes 
in America for tea tables. There was a white table- 
cloth on the table. But it didn't stay white long. 
We all ate with chop sticks and dribbled the food on 
the table-cloth. Each course was placed in the cen- 
ter of the table in a big bowl. Out of this you fished 
a portion with your chop sticks. If you weren't an 
expert you dropped little tell-tale spots from the 
center dish to your plate. From your plate to your 
mouth it was easier. The plate was a foil. It gath- 
ered up the flying particles. It isn't polite to put 
your chop sticks in your mouth. But it's an art not 
to. Most of us gayly licked them and then placed 
them back into the center bowl and fished for more. 
Hygiene is not one of China's virtues. We had 
everything to eat from chicken and rice to snails and 



2 2 Behind the Battle Lines 

ancient eggs. There were fifteen courses. When 
we had finished, a towel wrung out in boiling water 
was passed around. It was better than a napkin. 
You could take a good scrub. But ladies with 
painted faces find it trying. After the meal we with- 
drew to an adjoining room. Here were cushioned 
" kongs " to recline on, while one smoked and talked. 
Throughout the evening the conversation was gay 
and interesting. China's future as a republic was the 
chief topic. All agreed there must never be a return 
to monarchy. The women were rather silent. It 
was the Columbia student who led the discussion. 
He turned the conversation to women and the new 
freedom. He had been impressed with America. 

" In America," he said, " I met young women 
students and talked to them freely. I even called on 
them and there were no chaperons. It is marvel- 
ous." 

But despite the young man's enthusiasm for the 
West, he had returned to his native land. When 
questioned he acknowledged he had come back to 
marry a Chinese girl. 

" I believe," he said, " that European customs are 
right, that men and women should know each other 
before marriage, but I was betrothed to this girl 
when we were babies. She's been waiting for me 
ever since. If I don't marry her she'll be disgraced 
for life. I've never seen her and I won't be allowed 
to until the wedding day. It's taking a chance, but 
then all life's a chance. Maybe we'll hit it off and 
I can educate her. I'll have to follow the customs 
of my country, but if I have a son, when he is a man 
it will be different." 

It was easy to talk to this young man. He had an 
open mind. His eyes were directed toward the fu- 
ture. Not so the young Japanese professor who had 



Awakening China — The Bound Woman 23 

come to see me when I was in Tokio. He had called 
early one Sunday morning while I was stopping at a 
Japanese inn. According to custom he came directly 
to my room. I was still clad in kimono and bath 
slippers. But as that is the height of fashion in 
Japan, he was not embarrassed. He came in, knelt 
down and bowed his head to the floor and sat down 
on his feet. I followed suit and sat on my feet. 
There was an awkward silence. Then we tried to 
talk. This man was against all modern ways for 
women. Acquaintance before marriage was immod- 
est. Woman's place was the home. His mind was 
directed towards the past. He believed in rigidity 
and mechanical efficiency, and felt that the Emperor 
and the favored few should direct the ways of the 
universe. In the difference between his point of view 
and the young Chinaman's lay the difference between 
China and Japan. 

The mass of people in China to-day are ignorant, 
superstitious, and procrastinating, but they are alive 
and looking to the future. China is beginning to 
absorb the spirit of modern democracy, while Japan 
has merely adopted the superficial formalities of the 
West, material efficiency, militarism, diplomacy, and 
the law courts. When we left the restaurant we 
passed again through the kitchen. It was ten-thirty. 
The cooks had gone to bed. They were stretched 
out in cots set up in the kitchen. We had to pass 
among them. They turned over sleepily and looked 
at us. That front doors lead through kitchens and 
bedrooms is characteristic of China. On the surface 
life is crude and ugly. The worst side is put first. 
From a car window a Chinese town is a mass of 
grimy walls. The buildings are all one story. The 
streets are alleys between stone walls. But in the 
walls are doorways. Once inside those doorways 



24 Behind the Battle Lines 

there Is a surprise. If it's a private house, there is a 
courtyard with a fountain and flowers, and opening 
onto the courtyard are big, airy rooms. Beneath the 
dirt and refuse of China you find beauty. On the 
surface the civihzation is that of the Dark Ages. 
The law courts are primitive. The courtroom per- 
haps is hardly more than a cellar in a basement. But 
the judge frequently drops words of wisdom. 

One day I visited an orphan asylum. It is one of 
the few in China. For as yet there is little social 
work in that land. The place would have horrified 
any modern organized charity association. There 
was no medical examination. Sick and ill were 
thrown together. Children with frightful skin dis- 
eases were spreading their maladies. Once a week 
all bathed together in a big tank. The children slept 
together in a row on a raised wooden platform. 
Those who were old enough were put to work. 
Children of eight and over were weaving from 7 to 
1 1 A. M., from 2 to 5, and from 6 to 10 P. M. Physi- 
cally the conditions were atrocious, but actually the 
children were better off than in many of our up-to- 
date institutions. No one scolded them. They 
were never whipped. They talked and played. 
They were not becoming cogs in a machine. China's 
needs are material. The land needs sewers, scrub- 
bing brushes, schools and railroads. But when these 
physical problems are mastered China will shine 
forth. She has the capacity for freedom and always 
has had. Even in the days of the great Empress 
Dowager of China, when heads were being Indis- 
criminately cut off, there was a democracy and free- 
dom unknown to Japan. The Empress Dowager 
was familiarly called " The Old Buddha." That 
lady herself, in spite of her belief in her divinity, was 
extremely democratic. On her last appearance in 



Awakening China — The Bound JVoman 25 

public, when she was passing through one of the great 
gates and looking up saw some friends on the wall, 
she not only waved but called up gay words of greet- 
ing. No other monarch could have yelled to ac- 
quaintances in an upper story window without loss of 
dignity. But the Empress Dowager's dignity rested 
on something more secure than appearances. She 
possessed real power. She, like so many Chinese, 
had an open mind. At the close of her reign she 
began to make reforms. These were no halfway 
measures. She had seen the light and did not hesi- 
tate to say so. She denounced the old methods of 
education. Said she: "The ancient system of 
arguing in a circle has hypnotized us for hundreds 
of years. We must change if we are to progress. 
Our empire is clogged by the fatal word precedent." 
It was she who pointed out that the government 
should represent the people, saying, " The essential 
feature of European civilization lies in the fact that 
real sympathy and understanding exists between 
rulers and people. Ignoring our real needs we have 
so far taken from Europe nothing but externals." 

If a monarch who believed herself God-sent could 
talk thus, it is small wonder the seeds of democracy 
are to be found in every Chinaman. The fact dis- 
plays itself in all kinds of ways. There is as yet 
no organized woman's suffrage association. Most 
women can not read and write. More than half the 
men do not vote. But as individuals the people are 
thinking and acting. Some women were so far ad- 
vanced that they attempted to copy their sisters in 
England. A handful got together and one day 
marched on the Chinese Parliament. They threw 
stones and smashed windows and demanded suffrage. 
There was no power behind this little group. It did 
not win the vote. But it shows the freedom and 



2 6 Behind the Battle Lines 

democracy of China. Such a thing could not have 
happened in Japan. Another such instance occurred 
in one of the provinces. Here some women were 
elected representatives of the local parliament. 
There never before had been women representatives. 
It may not happen again for ages. The women of 
China are not yet clamoring for office. But it shows 
what can be done. How unbiased the Chinese are! 
How eager to be in the forefront of progress ! It is 
this courage and capacity to break through an- 
cient customs and precedent that will carry the Chi- 
nese far. When they feel a thing they are not 
ashamed to express it. For instance, the wife in the 
past has not been considered an important person, 
while to-day she is often the center of the home. 
Recently one man who loved his wife very dearly 
determined, on her recovery from a serious illness, 
to show his gratitude to the gods by making a journey 
to a temple in the hills. It was fifteen miles from 
his house to the temple, but every step of the way 
he bumped his head upon the ground. His neigh- 
bors, who were not emancipated, laughed. They 
said they could understand it if he had done it for 
his mother, but to do it for his wife ! But the man 
stood by his guns. He lived what he believed. 
There is a serenity of soul and a largeness of vision 
in the Chinaman that is extraordinary. Perhaps it 
is due to the greatness of his country. For China is 
built on a magnificent scale. There is no miniature 
loveliness about it. There are great arid deserts, 
treeless valleys, stony river beds, and ragged brown 
snow-capped mountains. The country opens out and 
up before one. 

Often I walked on the great wall around Peking, 
which is thirty feet high and twenty-five feet broad. 
At my feet stretched the city. The narrow streets 




THE RECENT EMPRESS DOWAGER OF CHINA 



Awakening China — The Bound Woman 27 

swarmed with myriad hurrying rickshaw men, the 
blue-hooded carts with their donkeys, an occasional 
automobile or a passing camel from Mongolia, and 
from this moving, seething, picturesque mass rose the 
shrill cries and chatter of the Chinese. Nothing is 
static, all Is life and action, and out of this eager life 
rose the serene temples and palaces of China. Their 
roofs glisten in the sunlight. The yellow tiles of the 
Palace shimmer like molten gold, and out be- 
yond the city towers the Temple of Heaven. Its 
tiles are a deep, penetrating blue, a blue that came 
straight from the skies. Near to the temple is 
dingy and shabby. The wood is warped, the paint 
is chipped from Its walls, but its beauty of outline and 
the color of its roof dazzle all beholders. This is 
true of all the temples and palaces. Minutely exam- 
ined, one wonders at their cheapness. But at dis- 
tance the largeness of design, the beauty of color. Is 
extraordinary. China has grasped the thing be- 
neath, the spirit, and given It expression. Humanity 
face to face may be petty and ugly, but people thrown 
together In a mass united by a great ideal, shine forth 
like some great God. That is why China will live 
and grow. She has kept the beauty of spirit of the 
past and is uniting It to the new beauty of spirit of 
the future. On the surface this land wallows in 
filth. But even as the blue, yellow and green tiled 
palace and temple roofs rise resplendent and daz- 
zling In the clear blue sky, so does the human, demo- 
cratic, freedom-loving spirit of the Chinese break 
through Its bonds of Ignorance, superstition, and 
precedent. 



CHAPTER III 

ACROSS SIBERIA DURING THE BOLSHEVIK 
REVOLUTION 

I LEFT Peking in the evening. Shrill Chinese 
chatter penetrated every corner of the train. 
The next day the walled towns with their nar- 
row alleys disappeared; the hills vanished, the land 
flattened, mud huts filled the horizon. At Mukden 
we encountered again the Japanese. There came a 
night on a Japanese train. It was a train de luxe, 
an advertisement on the part of Japan of her compe- 
tence, a sort of " See how good it is to be ruled by 
us! " I had a compartment to myself and a real 
bed with dazzling white linen sheets. But this ride 
was brief. In the morning we arrived at a small 
frontier town and boarded a dingy, dirty, Russian 
train. Despite the dirt I felt out of the East, back 
in the West. The Russian language is as unintelli- 
gible as the Chinese, but it has a familiar note, just as 
the rough log houses in place of mud and stone huts, 
and the long, belted, fur-lined coat and fur cap in- 
stead of the pigtail and shirt, bring one back with a 
rush from queer customs and mysticism to a crude 
but modern civilization. 

At seven in the evening we reached Harbin and 
Siberia. Here I was to catch the Vladivostok ex- 
press for Petrograd. The temperature had dropped 
30 degrees; it was dark and cold as I stepped into 
the large waiting-room. The warmth of the place 
was grateful, but the relief was momentary, the air 

28 



Across Siberia During the Revolution 29 

was foul. Sprawled over the floor, on the benches, 
in the chairs, were hundreds of Russian refugees. 
There wasn't an unoccupied floor spot. Women and 
babies lay flat upon their backs with their bags as 
head-rests. Dirty Russian soldiers sat upon curled- 
up legs and smoked and spat upon the floor, and lit- 
tered the place with cigarette butts. Rough-looking 
Cossacks with unshaven faces, armed and knived, 
pushed their way in and out of the crowded room. 
The Russian revolution had descended upon me. I 
shrank back frightened. All around me was a bab- 
ble of voices, but not one word could I understand. 
It was seven, and I had had no food since one o'clock. 
In the far end of the room was a refreshment coun- 
ter, but the crowd was too dense to reach it. I 
searched for a place to sit, but there was none to be 
had even on the floor. I stood on one foot and then 
on the other. Two hours crawled by. The bulletin 
board showed the Petrograd train was many hours 
late. I could endure the discomfort no longer. I 
struggled to the door. 

It was dangerous to leave the station. Stories 
had reached me in China of the disorder in Harbin. 
There had been shooting in the streets, and hardly a 
day passed without some killing. Chinese, Russians, 
and Japanese filled the town, no one was in control, 
the foreign consulates remained under cover. But 
bad air, hunger, and fatigue drove me forth. In- 
stinct said the Chinaman was to be trusted. I hailed 
a rickshaw and climbed in. There is one word com- 
mon to all lands. " Hotel," I said. We slipped 
out into the dark night. Soon I was at Harbin's one 
hotel. That place, like the station, bulged with hu- 
manity. Beds filled the corridors. Russia was 
spewing forth an endless stream. Even here my 
English tongue brought no response till a young man 



30 Behind the Battle Lines 

In European dress stepped forward. I had asked 
for the British Consulate. " Let me take you 
there," he said. " I have an automobile." Trust 
Is a prime requisite for travel in warring Europe. I 
gladly accepted. A quick, breathless ride in the win- 
ter night set me before the house of the English Con- 
sul. But my reception by the young consular assist- 
ant was not cordial. Life was difficult and danger- 
ous, strange women an added responsibility, my 
supperless condition a vexation, for the young man 
had nothing to offer. We chatted for a couple of 
hours. At eleven my companion insisted on seeing 
me to my train. We deserted the sidewalk and 
took to the snow-covered road. 

" It Is safer," said my companion, " for there has 
been much shooting lately." 

It was a mile to the station. The night air bit, 
and my feet grew numb. When we arrived we 
learned to our dismay the train was still hours late. 
It wouldn't arrive before two A. M. I was faint from 
hunger. I clamored for food. Reluctantly my 
companion set out with me for the hotel. A hard 
piece of bread, a stale egg, and a weak cup of tea 
gave me back a little courage. I begged my com- 
panion to go home and to bed. But his sporting 
blood was up. He Insisted on seeing the thing 
through. We returned to the station. We crowded 
into the packed building and found standing room 
near the door. One o'clock came and went. 
Rough-looking Russian soldiers gazed suspiciously at 
the neat khaki-clad Englishman beside me and 
brushed rudely against him. He swung his cane 
nonchalantly and looked uneasily about. Minute 
after minute crept by. Two o'clock came, then two- 
thirty and the shrill whistle of a train. 

I bade my companion good-by and staggered up 



Across Siberia During the Revolution 31 

the steps of a first-class state car. Would my berth 
reservation be correct? A thick-set man in a Rus- 
sian blouse unlocked a stateroom door. I was too 
tired to notice my surroundings. The grimy dirt of 
the floor, the gray sheets went unheeded. My heart 
rejoiced at the unoccupied upper berth. I flung off 
my clothes and dropped into the lower berth. The 
seclusion and rest were heavenly, but a wave of lone- 
liness swept over me. Was there any one on the 
train who spoke English? Had the members of the 
Y. M. C. A. or the American correspondent whom 
I expected caught this train? Should I find them in 
a neighboring car? Then I smiled. I remembered 
the letter an editor of a magazine had given me. It 
was a letter " To whom it may concern." It was the 
last sentence in the letter which made me chuckle. It 
said, " We can vouch for the character of the bearer 
of this note and will be responsible for her actions 
and conduct throughout her journey." Poor editor! 
To vouch for a stray woman in turbulent Russia ! I 
chuckled again and dropped asleep. 

It was six A. M, when I awoke with a start. My 
stateroom door had been flung open. The Russian 
porter was showing a Cossack soldier into my com- 
partment. I sat up in my berth and let forth a flood 
of English; I gesticulated wildly, but the Russians 
only shook their heads. Then the Cossack dismissed 
the porter, closed the door, and locked it. Tales of 
Cossack brutality surged through my mind. I felt 
for my money under my pillow. My heart beat vio- 
lently. The soldier was distinctly disagreeable. 
He saw my discomfiture and enjoyed it. He gath- 
ered up my scattered garments and flung them into 
my berth. Then he slowly took off his coat and 
shoes and climbed into the upper berth. I heard him 
making his preparations for sleep. I listened breath- 



32 Behind the Battle Lines 

lessly till all was still. Then I stealthily began to 
put on my clothes. When dressed in my coat and 
skirt I crawled out of the lower berth and stood up. 
The soldier was lying above me with eyes wide open. 
He had a cigarette between his lips. He puffed 
at it leisurely and grinned at me amusedly. A wave 
of resentment seized me, but I picked up my comb 
and brush and began quickly to do up my hair. My 
hand trembled. Then suddenly I remembered the 
editor's letter, " We will be responsible for her ac- 
tions and conduct throughout her journey." My lips 
twitched; laughter surged up. My strained nerves 
relaxed, and fear vanished. I gathered up my pos- 
sessions, unbolted the door, flung it open, and in a 
moment was out in the corridor. But it was dark 
night outside. Not until nine A. M. would light ap- 
pear on the horizon. Every compartment door was 
closed and locked. At the end of the car the porter 
snored peacefully in his bunk. I stood in the sway- 
ing train corridor and waited for dawn. My cour- 
age oozed. I wanted to turn and run home. 

At last day came. At ten the doors began to 
open. I wandered up and down, inquiring, " Do 
you speak English?" and " Parlez-vous frangaisf " 
At last I found a Russian who spoke French. 

"Is there an ' English-speaking person on the 
train? " I asked. 

" Yes," he said, " there are two American boys in 
the rear car." 

Joyfully I hurried back and timidly knocked on 
their door. In a moment a sleepy American boy 
stuck his head out at me. I explained my predica- 
ment. 

" Don't you worry," was the cheery answer. 
" We'll be dressed in a minute." And presently two 
boys from New York City and a Serbian soldier who 



Across Siberia During the Revolution 33 

spoke English fluently were listening to my story. 

It was the Serbian soldier who took command. 
" We three are traveling together for an American 
firm," he said. " We have two compartments be- 
tween us. There is an unoccupied berth in mine. 
You'd better come travel with us." Gladly I con- 
sented, and soon my luggage was beside the Serbian's. 

When I had washed, we went to the dining-car. 
There were a few Russian women on the train, but 
they knew no English. The Y. M. C. A. men and 
the American correspondent had not turned up. 
The passengers were Russian merchants, army of- 
ficers, and soldiers. I fought hard to keep up my 
courage. The American boys were shy and inexpe- 
rienced. Petrograd seemed a long way off. Twelve 
more days and nights of travel — an eternity ! It 
was the Serbian soldier to whom I turned. He was 
young, only twenty-five. He had black hair and 
burning black eyes, a pale face full of restless energy. 
He had been in the Serbian Army since 19 12, and in 
the great retreat. His nerves were spent and jan- 
gling. Wounded and nerve-racked, he had been dis- 
charged. For a year he had been in America. His 
friends called him Nick, and I soon followed suit. 
Nick could speak Russian like a native. From him 
we learned that my adventures of the night were the 
subject of conversation. I did not receive much sym- 
pathy. To the Russians I seemed finicky. Life had 
gotten down to the elementals. There was no room 
for conventions. For a woman to object to sharing 
a compartment with a man was fussiness. The 
lady had better stay at home if she is that particular. 
I swallowed hard and tried to adjust myself to new 
standards. I strove to drop into the fighting man's 
world of crudeness, blows, and danger. I could see 
that even Nick thought me sensitive. 



34 Behind the Battle Lines 

It was a queer, rushing world into which I had 
come. Even that first day there were wild stories 
afloat — that Kerensky had fallen; that he had not 
fallen but was in possession of Petrograd and fighting 
rebellion. Smoke and talk filled the train. Ciga- 
rette butts and ashes covered the floor. The air grew 
fouler and fouler. People sneezed and coughed, but 
no one opened a window. There is a prejudice 
against fresh air in Siberia and Russia. Many of the 
car windows are nailed down, and not once during the 
journey was there an attempt at ventilation. At 
night the air grew cold and rank, in the day hot and 
fetid. Over and over our lungs breathed this foul- 
ness. My throat grew sore ; I began to cough. The 
station stops were a godsend. Flinging on our coats 
we marched back and forth on the platform. At 
each stop the entire train turned out. Every man 
was armed with a tea-kettle. At the stations were 
huge samovars or big tanks of boiling water. The 
tea-kettles quickly filled, back rushed the passengers. 
Then from every compartment floated the odor of 
tea, the smell of cigarettes, and the babble of voices. 

All day and most of the night this went on. When 
the evening of the first day came I was half sick and 
utterly weary. The Serbian soldier sensed my fa- 
tigue. An understanding light came into his eyes. 
He began to tell me about his mother and sister. 
They had been taken prisoners by the Germans. An 
occasional post-card at intervals of three months was 
his only news. His heart was torn with anxiety. 
" You know," he said, " a Serbian places his sister 
before all others; he stands by her through every- 
thing. He never marries until she marries, and he 
cares for her always." He showed me some pres- 
ents — lovely silks from Japan — which he was 
hoarding to take to his mother and sister on the day 



Across Siberia During the Revolution 35 

when he could go to them. But it wasn't homesick- 
ness made Nick tell me of his family. It was his 
way of making me one of them. When he had fin- 
ished, he said, " We fellows have decided to bunk 
in together, or rather one of us will share your state- 
room with the soldier, and you can have this place 
to yourself." A lump came up in my throat. Here 
was a fighting man, who had killed many, still capa- 
ble of infinite tenderness. It was with a very thank- 
ful heart I locked my stateroom door and delighted 
in the blessed seclusion. 

In the morning I woke with splitting head and 
aching throat. I could scarcely breathe. When 
Nick appeared I begged for air. He wrestled with 
the window and managed to open it a little. But the 
respite was brief. The porter on our train was an 
ugly youth, a Social Democrat of the extreme Left, 
a Bolshevik. To him we were all hateful, capitalists 
and bourgeois. I knew no Russian words with 
which to make friends. I had not learned to say 
Tavarish — comrade. He discovered the open win- 
dow and slammed it to with a torrent of angry words. 

I struggled through the day. At each station we 
hurried to the platform to learn the news. Con- 
flicting stories poured over the wires. Now it was 
that there was rioting and bloodshed in Petrograd 
and Moscow, that the Bolsheviki were in the ascend- 
ant. Again that Kerensky had moved on Petrograd 
with an army and quelled the uprising. When the 
news for the Bolsheviki was bad our surly young 
porter grew more and more ugly. He took my 
drinking glass from me; then he removed my electric 
light. I began to fear him and sat with my door 
locked. I had difiiculty in keeping Nick from smash- 
ing the boy's head. 

All the time our train moved steadily forward, and 



36 Behind the Battle Lines 

to my amazement I discovered that Siberia was beau- 
tiful. There were hills, and great woods, and rush- 
ing rivers. Though it was November, many places 
were without snow. When we drew near Irkutsk, 
there were snow-covered mountains and a great lake. 
Siberia had much of the grandeur of Canada. But 
the villages were crude, the houses chiefly log huts. 
The peasant huts have but two rooms. Sometimes 
as many as twelve people sleep in one room. 

The Siberian women, like the men, were strong, 
rough creatures. They wore rubber boots and short 
skirts and had shawls tied about their heads. The 
younger women had the beauty of health and 
strength. They worked in the fields with men, their 
labor was the equal of theirs. Sex differences were 
not considered. There was no woman's question. 
The men and women were comrades and equals. At 
one station a Siberian woman boarded our train for 
Petrograd. She went as the representative of the 
women of her village to demand that clothing be sent 
to her town in exchange for the foodstuff being sent 
to Petrograd. She was full of tales of her village. 
Two deserting soldiers had just visited her town and 
raped a young girl. The women had risen up in 
wrath and beaten the men and thrust them out. It 
was a crude, elemental world, full of hot passion, 
into which I was rushing. 

As the days went on my cold grew worse, until 
finally 1 could only lie in my berth. Through the 
long, weary hours Nick talked and nursed me. 
When my cold threatened to go on my lungs, he 
hunted up a young Russian soldier who was a medical 
student. They sat beside me and discussed my 
needs. I began to be quite outside myself, like a 
third person watching a story unfold. I saw a sick 
woman and a Serbian soldier rushing on into a great 



Across Siberia During the Revolution 37 

maelstrom. His nerves tightened and his body 
strengthened at this new responsibility which had 
been placed upon him. 

Heroic measures were adopted by my young doc- 
tors. It was the method of the trenches and sol- 
diers. I was to sweat my cold out. Army coats 
were piled on top of me, my window closed tight. 
At the stations Nick bought bottles of boiled milk. 
This he sternly poured down my throat. Minute by 
minute my discomfort increased. My body ached; 
sweat poured from me. But Nick relentlessly stood 
guard. Then he began to tell me stories — the trag- 
edies of battle. Nearly all his friends had been 
killed, his best friend before his eyes. A shell sev- 
ered the head from the body. That friend's body 
was dear to Nick. Between the bursting bombs he 
crawled out to the battlefield. Tenderly he gathered 
up that headless form and bore it back to the 
trenches. Blood from his friend's wounds infected 
open cuts in Nick's hands. For weeks he tossed in 
high fever. But the infected hands and arms were 
not amputated, and in time he recovered. As I lis- 
tened to these tales my own suffering seemed small, 
the endurance of men enormous. Feebly my hand 
rose to my forehead in salute. 

The next morning I was weak, but my cold had 
broken. Now the stories we heard at the stations 
grew alarming. It was evident a great revolution 
had taken place in Petrograd. Still our train rushed 
on. But the stops grew tense with excitement. 
Men huddled together and felt for their pistols. 
The car doors were locked. This express train with 
its first-class carriages and sleeping compartments 
was a sign of the plutocracy that had been. Any 
moment we might expect to have the windows 
smashed. Nick tried to keep the news from me, but 



38 Behind the Battle Lines 

the American boys came with their stories. I ceased 
to be afraid. One could not think in terms of the 
individual, life was moving too fast. But sick fear 
had crept into the hearts of the Russian merchants. 
They stormed and raged. 

One mean little Russian repudiated his country. 
" All Russians are cattle," he said. " They ought 
to be milked and then killed." 

Nick came to me white with rage. " That man 
must be beaten." I held on to his hands and tried 
to quiet him. " Well," he fumed, " I won't hit him, 
but next station I'll put him out on the platform and 
tell the crowd what he said. They'll tear him limb 
from limb." 

" It isn't the way, Nick," I begged, " it isn't the 
way." Gradually his anger subsided. 

" You see," he said, " I'm not good. I'm a brute. 
I've told you I was." But in the end it was words 
and not blows that were used with the Russian mer- 
chant. What was said I never knew, but thereafter 
the man walked with bowed head and cringing step. 

And now the last day of the trip had come. Rus- 
sian soldiers had begun to crowd on the train. They 
slept in the corridors or standing in passageways. 
But there was no violence. At some of the stations 
there had been rioting. Windows had been smashed 
and houses burned. But no move was made against 
the train, and at six one morning we pulled quietly 
into Petrograd. There was a great stillness over 
the station. There were no hurrying porters or 
calling cabmen, none of the bustle of arrival. We 
filed silently out into the street. It was like the dead 
of night. A few people lurked in doorways, but the 
big snow-covered square was empty. 

It was Nick again who came to the rescue. " We 
had better go to the hotel across the way; people 



Across Siberia During the Revolution 39 

keep off the street at night." At the hotel a sleepy- 
ported showed us to rooms, but there was no heat, no 
hot water for a bath, only one electric light, and 
nothing to eat until nine. We sat in our big cold 
rooms. From our windows we looked out on the 
empty square. There was an ominous silence. The 
place was pregnant with hidden life. Shiveringly we 
waited for the dawn. What it would bring, we knew 
not. 



CHAPTER IV 

TURBULENT RUSSIA DAILY LIFE 

DAWN rose over the city. I waited for what 
it would unfold. Petrograd was in the 
throes of revolution. The working class had 
risen. The extreme left of the Socialists, the Bol- 
sheviki, had gained control. 

I sat on the broad window ledge of my hotel win- 
dow and gazed out at the silent snow-covered square. 
At seven, two hours before daybreak, the city began 
to stir. Great lines of people formed. Weary, 
ragged soldiers stood a block long before tobacco 
shops. Women with shawls about their heads and 
baskets on their arms appeared before provision 
stores. The trams began to move. They over- 
flowed with people. Soldiers climbed to the car 
roofs and sat there. Women as well as men strug- 
gled for a foothold on a car step and held on to one 
another. 

At nine, when the sun came over the horizon, the 
city throbbed with life. Little processions of men 
and women passed arm in arm under red flags, sing- 
ing. There was the beat of drums and some Kron- 
stadt sailors swung into sight. Everywhere there 
was movement and action, but no violence. People 
stopped to argue. Voices rose high and arms waved 
wildly. It was a people intensely alive and intensely 
intelligent. Every one had an opinion. It was my 
first glimpse of Russia. My heart leaped up. 

40 



Turbulent Russia — Daily Life 41 

These people had not been contaminated by proxim- 
ity to German militarism. They were not cogs in a 
machine. In spite of suppression they were not ser- 
vile. They were alive and free. Continually that 
first impression was verified. Every Russian I met 
could talk. Those who couldn't read or write could 
talk. 

But life in Petrograd for a stranger was difficult. 
The hotels were bourgeois and capitalistic. They 
received scant help from the working class govern- 
ment. There was no heat in my room and only one 
electric light. The food grew poorer day by day. 
Attempts to remedy defects by fees were useless. 
The waiter pushed back my tip proudly and said, 
" We don't take tips now." A sign in one restaurant 
read: " Don't think you can insult a man because 
he is a waiter by giving him a tip." I saw the world 
has been turned upside down. The cooks and wait- 
ers had become the aristocrats; the lawyers, bankers, 
and professors, the riff-raff. 

I shivered in my room and added coat after coat. 
The cold — which I had contracted coming across 
Siberia — grew worse. But there was nothing to do 
but grin and bear it. The doctors had fled or were 
in hiding. It was only after a twenty-four-hours' 
struggle I secured a doctor, and when he arrived he 
could be of little assistance. The drug stores were 
closed. It was impossible to have a prescription 
put up. The chemists had gone on strike. They 
refused to work under the Bolsheviki. 

But in a week the government brought the recal- 
citrants to terms. It threatened to take over the 
stores unless the chemists did business as usual. 

Life was a continual battle, as it always has been 
between the people who have and the people who 
haven't. Only now it was the capitalists and the 



42 Behind the Battle Lines 

employers who were struggling for a foothold and 
the working class who were ruthlessly censoring, 
suppressing the press and imprisoning. The first 
revolution was political, the second economic. The 
working people had risen. Three things they 
wanted — peace, bread, and land. The Provisional 
Government under Kerensky had given none of these 
things. Instead, war was continued and an offensive 
was planned. This was too much for the weary 
Russians. No one wanted to fight. Besides, the 
Provisional Government failed to live up to its prom- 
ises. It couldn't. It was torn between two factions, 
left and right. It never came to an agreement. 
The land remained undivided: the people went hun- 
gry. Then the workers grew restless. They saw 
their dreams of peace, bread, and land no nearer. 
Silently they massed, and one night while the city 
slept one government was wiped out and another 
took its place. It was done quietly. In the Winter 
Palace the ministers of the Provisional Government 
sat and debated. Outside the Bolsheviki (work- 
men and soldiers) gathered. They barricaded the 
streets leading to the railroad stations with barrels, 
wagons and automobiles, and soldiers with bayonets 
guarded the barricades. Meantime the leaders of 
the Bolshevik movement assembled at Smolny Insti- 
tute (formerly an aristocratic girls' school) and 
made it the new seat of government. Cannons and 
guns were mounted about the Institute. Then over 
the wires orders went to the soldiers in the streets. 
Shells began to burst over the Winter Palace. 
The patter of machine guns and the thud, thud of 
bursting shells broke the night's stillness. The State 
Bank, the telephone and telegraph stations were 
quickly seized and the small Cadet Corps guarding 
them overpowered. A thousand members of the 



Turbulent Russia — Daily Life 43 

Cadet Corps and the Woman Battalion guarded the 
Winter Palace. In a few hours they were forced to 
surrender and the ministers were seized and sent to 
imprisonment in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. 

At three A. M. Petrograd was in the hands of the 
Bolsheviki and Leon Trotsky was presiding over the 
All Russian Soviet (congress of workers and sol- 
diers) at Smolney Institute, and addressing its mem- 
bers as follows : " We are standing before an ex- 
periment unheard of in history, of creating a govern- 
ment with no other aim than the wants of the work' 
ingmen, peasants and soldiers." 

At seven-thirty A. M., when the first sign of the 
day's activities began, Petrograd presented its usual 
appearance. Streets were being cleaned, trams 
began to move, and long lines of people appeared 
before the provision shops. It was as though the 
Revolution had never b-een. But in reality society 
had turned a complete somersault. On the under- 
side were the monarchists, capitalists, landowners, 
employers, skilled artisans, bourgeoisie and intellec- 
tuals; on the top, the soldiers, peasants and workers. 
There was a clean cleavage between the two groups. 
Probably in no other country could there have been 
such a revolution. For no other country has so con- 
sistently abused the working class. The Russian 
worker had nothing to lose. The peasant has lived 
from hand to mouth. He has gone without shoes 
and without meat. He has been flogged and impris- 
oned. Seventy-five per cent, of the country had noth- 
ing to lose and everything to gain, and they turned 
Bolshevik. They took to the Revolution greedily. 
Unfortunately in many cases it meant to the individ- 
ual a chance to get even, a chance to grab, instead of 
an opportunity to create heaven on earth. 

As a result the change in power brought no 



44 Behind the Battle Lines 

spiritual regeneration. Instead each group assumed 
the character and faults of Its predecessor. The 
capitalists resorted to strikes and sabotage, and In 
every way Impeded and hindered the new govern- 
ment. The proletariat on the other hand became 
dictators, and retaliated with punishment and Impris- 
onment. One dictatorship gave place to another 
and the class hatred was as great as before. 

Into this maelstrom I had come. What the next 
moment held no one knew, but each moment a coun- 
ter revolution was expected. 

Truly Petrograd was no place to be 111 In. The 
nights were the worst. As I lay In my bed and 
waited for the dawn my nerves played me tricks. I 
couldn't sleep. There was no one to speak to, no 
one who spoke anything but Russian. If I rang my 
bell, no one answered. I lay and shivered and 
waited for street fighting to begin. When the ma- 
chine guns opened fire, what should I do? I seemed 
to hear the bullets whizzing through the window. If 
the soldiers entered to search or loot, would they 
spare me? How was I to explain I was an Ameri- 
can and a worker and not a capitalist? 

But as the days passed and no counter revolution 
came, my fears vanished. Often I gazed from my 
window and always I saw a great surging mass of 
people, and the more I looked the better I liked the 
people. They were so alive and eager. By this 
time I had made friends with the maid. I learned 
to say " Tavarlsh " (comrade). I would point to 
myself and say Tavarlsh. It always brought a smile 
and the most ready service. 

This gave me a clew to the way to behave. When 
you are under a working class government live hke 
the workers. 



Turbulent Russia — Daily Life 45 

I decided to give up the hotel and find a home in 
a working class family. The decision was a wise 
one. The hotel was very expensive. In the apart- 
ment I went to I had more heat, more food and 
better care for one-tenth the money. From that 
minute forth I never had any personal difficulty. 
The soldiers and workers took me into their midst 
without question. Often I was on the street until 
midnight, but no one molested me; I had only to 
smile and say " Amerikanski Bolshevik Tavarish " 
(American Bolshevik Comrade) to have a hundred 
hands stretched out in aid. I got caught in great 
crowds and was unafraid. The average Russian has 
a dual personality — he is both a brute and an angel. 
But if you expect him to be an angel he'll be one. 
Many foreigners experienced great hardship in 
Petrograd and went home with wild stories, but much 
of the difficulty was of their own making. You don't 
wave a red rag at a bull if you want the bull to be- 
have. And it isn't wise to wear a high silk hat, a 
fur coat and a diamond ring and swagger up to an 
unfed, illy clothed Bolshevik and tell him he's a 
rascal. 

Every day on nearly every street corner a fur- 
coated gentleman and a soldier would be in hot argu- 
ment. In the end it always got down to the same 
practical basis : 

Soldier: " You are a capitalist." 

Gentleman: " You are a rascal." 

Soldier: " Capitalists are enemies of the peo- 
ple. All must be poor, all must be alike. Where 
did you get that fur coat? " 

Gentleman : " None of your business." 

Soldier: " Yes, it is. It is our turn to have the 
fur coats and we are going to have them." 



46 Behind the Battle Lines 

Sometimes on dark nights the fur coat changed 
hands, but usually the soldier and gentleman merely 
parted in hot anger. 

One night the correspondent Jack Reid was held 
up and robbed. But he knew a few Russian words 
and explained he was an American and a Socialist. 
Whereupon his possessions were promptly returned, 
his hand cordially shaken and he was sent off re- 
joicing. Another night a woman was held up and 
robbed. She was a Russian and explained patheti- 
cally that her home was far distant and she needed 
car fare. Her appeal had effect. A rouble was re- 
turned to her with the following instructions: " If 
any soldiers start to rob you again just tell them that 
Comrade So-and-so has already robbed you, but has 
left you a rouble to get home with." 

Certainly Petrograd was not a place to live in if 
you wanted a peaceful and luxurious life. It was a 
continual fight to get the bare necessities. The days 
there was heat there was no light. If the electric 
light worked and you had heat you ran short of food. 
There was the intense cold to combat; the tempera- 
ture stood on an average at twenty degrees below 
zero. One was thankful to get one thing a day 
accomplished. The cars were so crowded that fre- 
quently one had to walk miles in the snow-covered 
streets. Daily I grew tougher. The buttons got 
pulled off my clothes and remained off. I ceased to 
feel baths were a daily necessity. I grew thankful 
for coarse but nourishing food. There was plenty 
of tea, a fair amount of black bread, quantities of 
vegetables, cabbages, beets, carrots, turnips, potatoes 
and coarse meat. There was never any sweets or 
pastry, but sometimes we had butter and usually four 
lumps of sugar a day. It was a case of survive if you 
can and if you do you'll grow strong. And there 



Turbulent Russia — Daily Life 47 

was one great joy about life in Russia. It was 
thrillingly interesting. You could not be bored. 
Every day the Bolsheviki issued some new decree. 
One day all titles were abolished, the next judges 
and lawyers were eliminated. They and their knowl- 
edge were held to be useless. I confess to a wicked 
delight on that occasion. I am a lawyer and know 
how little justice there often is in the law. 

But such deeds frightened the Monarchists and 
Liberals. They would come out from hiding and 
make a show of resistance and then scurry back. 
For day by day the Bolsheviki grew in power. All 
the soldiers were Bolsheviki and they had the bay- 
onets. I used to feel I was living in a dream or had 
become Alice in Wonderland. In the few auto- 
mobiles rode collarless workingmen, while on the 
street trudged an angry and puzzled banker. Petro- 
grad became a city of working people. Duchesses 
and ladies-in-waiting wore aprons and wrapped 
shawls about their heads to hide their identity. 

In the midst of this passionate life the poor Bol- 
shevik Government had no easy task. It had let 
loose the brute force of Russia. It was the greedy 
brute who caused the trouble. He looted gayly and 
thoroughly while the government struggled desper- 
ately to bring about order, and these looting episodes 
were seized on and magnified by the opposition to 
discredit the Bolsheviki and spread terror. 

My first experience of looting I shall never forget. 
I had been out to dinner. I had heard shooting at 
a distance, but hadn't realized what it meant. It 
was when I started to go home about eleven that the 
sound of bullets began to beat in on me. My way 
lay in the direction of the shooting. The fatal thud, 
thud grew almost unbearable. Then there came 
shouts and cries of distress. I confess I was a cow- 



48 Behind the Battle Lines 

ard. I was with an American correspondent and 
his wife and I shamelessly begged them to see me 
home. I might be willing to die for a cause, but I 
didn't want to be killed by a stray bullet. With 
great difficulty we secured a sleigh. The driver was 
very loath to go in the direction we ordered. He 
said the shooting came from the Winter Palace, that 
soldiers were looting the Czar's wine cellar. It was 
a wonderful night, bright with stars. The sled 
glided swiftly over the hard snow. It seemed im- 
possible men could be killing one another. Then a 
sleigh dashed past us. It evidently carried a 
wounded man, for he kept crying out, " Help, com- 
rade, help." I shivered and held on to my compan- 
ions. Then we came to the great river Neva, so 
white and silent in its winter coat of ice. On either 
side of its banks stood picturesque buildings and 
a little way below the bridge we were crossing was 
the Winter Palace. The shots had grown very loud 
now. We could see soldiers running. Their guns 
had been taken from them. They were shouting 
and screaming. Our sleigh passed close by them, 
but they made no move toward us. My companions 
said something about going to see the excitement, but 
I wanted to get home and bury my head under the 
bed clothes. 

In the morning I had more courage. Besides, the 
shooting had ceased. I walked from my house to- 
ward the Winter Palace. When I came within two 
squares I saw bright red drops on the snow. At 
first I thought it was wine, but it was too red and 
thick for that, and there were splotches of red on 
some of the buildings where a wounded man had 
been leaning. All over the road and on the frozen 
Neva were smashed bottles. I picked up a bottle. 
Its label bore the Czar's coat of arms. It was a 



Turbulent Russia — Daily Life 49 

choice brand of Madeira. When I reached the 
Winter Palace I found it was guarded by a ragged 
crowd of factory boys in civilians' clothes, carrying 
bayonets. They were some of the Red Guard. 
They at least were sober. Wine is hard to get in 
these days, and vodka unattainable. Consequently 
the thirsty Russians grow desperate. That is what 
had happened the night before. Thirty soldiers got 
into the wine cellar and held an orgy; other soldiers 
came to drive them out and remained to drink. 
Quarreling began. Kronstadt sailors and Red 
Guards arrived, the drunk and half-drunk refused to 
leave. Firing began. Tempers rose higher and 
higher and a small battle ensued. In the end the 
hose of a fire engine was turned on, all the bottles in 
the wine cellar were smashed, and the place flooded. 
Three soldiers were drowned in the wine, and be- 
tween twenty and thirty killed and many wounded. 
But with daylight order came and shame and repent- 
ance. The Russian is always very repentant. He 
may murder a man, but afterwards he will feed and 
clothe the child of the man he has murdered. 

It was difficult in these swift moving days to see 
clearly. It will take time to see the Russian Revo- 
lution in just proportion. But one thing grew appar- 
ent. That is that in a bloody revolution where force 
is the basis, as in bloody war, everything fine gets 
pushed to the wall. Art, science, and social welfare 
vanish. The working class fought for power and 
became dictators. They ruled not by the vote, but 
by force. They pulled existence down to the con- 
ditions of the poorest workingman. They failed to 
live up to their ideals of beauty, brotherhood, fair 
play and freedom. Yet, while we condemn, there is 
this to remember: The Bolsheviki were in the 
throes of their struggle. Conditions will change 



50 Behind the Battle Lines 

and modify. The Russians are a brave, free-think- 
ing people. They are democrats. They have no 
taint of German mihtarism. It is with them Amer- 
ica belongs. 



CHAPTER V 

THE HUSKS OF RUSSIAN ROYALTY 

*'^^rOP off and have afternoon tea with the 

^^ Czarina," said the magazine editor as he 

^^-^ bade me good-by. 

" Why, yes," I said a little vaguely, " I'd like to, 
but isn't Siberia rather large?" To American 
journalists all things are possible. But after twelve 
days on the Pacific Ocean and twenty days and nights 
of train travel through Japan, Corea, China, Siberia 
and Russia, the Czarina looked like a needle in a hay- 
stack. 

Besides, the Bolshevik revolution had descended 
upon me. The one hope was to be as plebeian as 
possible. I destroyed all my letters to people of 
prominence. A journalist these days must be both a 
Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde, a lightning change artist, 
who will fit with either a king or a Bolshevik. 

To associate with the Czarina in Russia was like 
talking to a member of the I. W. W. on Rockefeller's 
front lawn. It would have meant off with my head. 
I decided to let the magazine editor have tea with 
the Czarina. But if I could not hobnob with roy- 
alty I could at least see their dwelling places. The 
Winter Palace in Petrograd was a disappointment. 
Outwardly it was impressive, but inside, constant 
use had robbed it of its glory. There were marks 
of muddy feet, silk hangings had been torn down 
to wrap about freezing soldiers, royal bedrooms 
had been turned into offices; one had the impres- 

Si 



52 Behind the Battle Lines 

sion that the Czar was long since dead and burled. 

I decided to go to Moscow. The Kremlin, it was 
said, had remained untouched. It contains perhaps 
the most gorgeous palace In the world. But to travel 
in Russia Is not easy. Soldiers have precedence. 
They crowd on and off trains and occupy all the 
seats. They have even been known, when they 
passed their own home, to pull the danger signal 
and hop off. After all, why shouldn't trains be used 
like automobiles? But It makes travel slow. The 
trip from Petrograd to Moscow took twenty hours. 
On each train is an " International wagon-lit." But 
berths in these cars are sold weeks ahead for a for- 
tune. At the last moment I secured a place for my- 
self and my interpreter In the International car. It 
was a woman's four-berth compartment. There was 
a Russian woman In a Red Cross costume in with us, 
and an unoccupied upper berth. Women travelers 
are rare, but an unoccupied berth rarer. 

Presently a Russian merchant was knocking on our 
door. He Insisted on rooming with us. We 
blocked the door and refused admittance. He 
fought for a while, but at length gave in. We were 
three to one. 

By this time the Russian woman had grown very 
friendly. She said she wore her costume as a dis- 
guise, for she belonged to the aristocracy. 

We stretched out on the sofas. Berths were not 
made up. To go regularly to bed was capitalistic. 
When the Russian woman found I was an American 
she talked freely. She was very bitter over her 
fate. " I don't dare go anywhere," she said. " I 
belong to the landowning class, or did, for everything 
has been taken from us. Our estate in the country, 
the land, the house, the furniture, was seized by the 
peasants. I had some jewels in the bank in Petro- 



The Husks of Russian Royalty 53 

grad, I went to get them. I thought I could pawn 
them, but the Bolsheviki had taken the banks. They 
wouldn't give me my jewels. I have a thousand 
roubles in cash. It's all I have in the world. My 
husband is a lieutenant in the army. But the officers 
have been reduced to the ranks. He has to eat and 
sleep with the men. He gets a soldier's pay, eight 
roubles a month. Each day I fear he will be killed." 

"But what are you going to do?" I asked. 
" How can you live? " 

" I don't know," she said. " When my money is 
gone, go out as a domestic. It is the only work I 
know." 

Again I had a bewildered sense of a turned upside 
down world. I felt I ought to hurry back to New 
York and get the Charity Organization Society to do 
work among the nobility. 

There was the pathetic case of the first lady-in- 
waiting to the Czarina. She was still living in her 
palace. It had not been taken from her, but no 
one dared associate with her. Skirts were held high 
when she passed. One day when I was visiting 
Maxim Gorky his telephone bell rang; it was the first 
lady-in-waiting. She had telephoned to Marie An- 
drievna, Gorky's wife. This is what she said: " I 
am so lonely, no one will speak to me; can't I come 
and see you?" The Gorkys really believe in 
brotherhood. They will help any one in trouble, 
whether it Is a countess or a workingman, so Marie 
Andrievna telephoned back: " Yes, of course, come 
at once and stay as long as you like." It was this 
kind of deed that subjected the Gorkys to arrest. 

But to return to the train. I reached Moscow 
safely, though the trip back was not so easy. We 
had first class tickets, but that meant nothing. All 
classes are the same these days. 



54 Behind the Battle Lines 

My first visit in Moscow was to the Kremlin. 
It was formerly as much a holy of holies as the 
palace of the Chinese Emperor in Peking. It has 
courtyards within courtyards and buildings within 
buildings. The great main gateway was shattered 
to bits by machine gun fire during the revolution, and 
the walls are battered with bullets. But inside little 
damage is visible. The Bolshevik commandant of 
the palace was a scrubby workingman, in a dilapi- 
dated suit. He hesitated some time before giving 
me a pass. The rooms, he said, had been sealed. 
But finally he scribbled something on a scrap of 
paper. 

The untidy, unshaven little man had ordered 
Prince Odoviesky to show me about. We made 
our way to the prince's apartments. It must be try- 
ing to a prince to have to obey orders. Still it was 
probably pleasanter showing off the palace than being 
interned in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. The 
prince was a courtly gentleman. I started to shake 
hands, but he blushed and ignored the outstretched 
hand. I don't know whether it was because he was 
a prince, or because since the days of the Bolsheviki 
he has been an outcast and no one has condescended 
to shake hands. I almost think it was the latter, for 
when we left he held out his hand quite cordially. 
The prince instructed one of the old court servants to 
take us through the buildings. 

First we saw the resplendent little chapel where 
the Czarina used to pray. Then we went through 
the gorgeous guest rooms used for foreign ambassa- 
dors. They were as they had been, marble baths 
and all. Nothing had been changed. But now the 
rooms were icy cold and empty, and there was a 
bullet hole through one of the windows. That bullet 




MAXIM GORKY AND HIS WIFE, MARIE ANDRIEVNA 



The Husks of Russian Royalty 55 

hole was a mystery. The bullet had never been dis- 
covered. 

Next we visited the throne room and ball room. 
The splendor was staggering. Untold wealth must 
have been wrung from the peasants to pay for it. 
On the wall behind the throne was a gigantic gold 
sun whose golden rays extended in every direction. 
The throne seemed to spring from the sun's center. 
It made a fitting background for a Czar. Beyond 
the throne room stretched the long supper hall. 
Here many gay dinners had been given. In the little 
alcoves all down the room were piles of elaborate 
furniture. Beds, bureaus, tables were mixed to- 
gether indiscriminately. These were treasures taken 
from other palaces and estates for safekeeping. 
The Kremlin had become a storehouse. The old 
retainer who showed us about was very proud of the 
place. He was eager to explain each item. He 
showed us the old wing, a portion of the building that 
has come down through the ages. It was Byzantine 
in style, with gaudy colors. The equipment was sim- 
ple. The Czar of those days was satisfied with a 
bedroom, sitting-room, dining-room and throne- 
room. None of the rooms was larger than a mod- 
ern drawing-room. 

The personal suite of the recent Czar was not vis- 
ible. Most of his furniture had been sent to him at 
Tobolsk. But we saw the Czarevitch's apartments. 
This was a palace in itself. There was something 
uncanny about the place. The rooms were still 
warm. An eiderdown puff lay ready on the royal 
bed, the clock on the mantel still ticked. Everything 
seemed ready. for the young master's return. One 
felt each moment there would be a blare of trumpets 
and the royal party would enter. We asked the old 



^6 Behind the Battle Lines 

servant if he liked the royal family. " Yes," he 
said, " they were good to me. They were kind em- 
ployers. I have nothing against them." 

Before we left we passed the main entrance to the 
palace. A great marble staircase led from the front 
door to the main upper hall. Up these stairs had 
poured thousands of courtiers, ladies in evening dress 
on their way to a royal ball, or nobility and ambas- 
sadors hurrying to the throne-room to listen to a 
royal speech. 

Directly at the head of the stairs facing all who 
entered was a huge oil painting. It was a picture of 
the Czar's grandfather, addressing the peasants. In 
proud and arrogant grandeur he stood there, while 
before him, bowing low, cringed the peasants, hats 
in hand, and underneath the picture were written the 
words of this former Czar, " I am glad to see you. 
I thank you for your courtesy. When you return 
home thank my people for me, but tell them not to 
believe any stupid rumors about the distribution of 
land and the giving of it to the peasants. These 
rumors are lies, spread by our enemies. Property 
is sacred." 

What a change had come ! By a mighty swing of 
life's pendulum the land had been wrested from the 
nobility. Never again would it be called sacred. 
The unhappy recent Czar has had to pay for the sins 
of his fathers. It is time we invented some new 
mottoes. We should change " Think before you 
speak " to " Think about your great-grandchildren 
before you speak." 

Poor Nicholas II must have had some bitter 
moments before he was led out to execution. Per- 
haps it flashed through his mind, " If only father 
and grandfather had been different this would never 
have happened." 



CHAPTER VI 

REVOLUTIONARY JUSTICE 

1W0KE to find that judges and lawyers had been 
abolished. Over-night, legal learning and an- 
cient precedents had been cast into the scrap- 
heap. It was refreshing to start with a clean slate. 
Russia was no longer bound by traditions. Still, hu- 
manity had not reformed overnight. There were 
people who would grab and lie and betray their fel- 
lows. What was to be done with them? 

In the early days of the Revolution there had been 
a great jail-delivery. Many thieves and murderers, 
as well as political offenders, were released. Every 
now and then a man was caught preying upon society. 
The Bolshevik mob had scant mercy for such a one. 
They had given him freedom, and this was his grat- 
itude. The culprit should pay the price. 

A member of the American Military Control in 
Petrograd told me of the following incident as one 
he had witnessed. A woman dashed into the street 
after a boy of fifteen. " He's stolen my pocket- 
book; he's stolen my pocket-book!" she cried. A 
miserable shrieking urchin sped madly down the road 
in front of her. He was caught by passers-by, and 
a crowd gathered. Blow upon blow fell upon the de- 
fenseless head. Childish shrieks of terror filled the 
air. The woman, appalled at what she had done, 
rushed back to the house. Again she made a des- 
perate search, and suddenly in a dark corner she 

57 



58 Behind the Battle Lines 

unearthed the missing pocket-book. Again she 
dashed into the street, waving her property and call- 
ing loudly her mistake. But it was too late : the 
childish cries were still; a beaten and lifeless body 
had just been hurled into the canal. Sick shame 
seized the mob. Rage surged in their hearts. Un- 
der the Tsar they had been mercilessly beaten and 
abused. Brute force had been their instructor. 
They turned on the woman and applied the only 
method they knew. They beat her to death and 
dropped her into the canal. 

Dire deeds were said to go on behind the grim 
walls of the fortress of Peter and Paul. Here min- 
isters and generals languished in cells formerly occu- 
pied by ardent revolutionists. Each day a wholesale 
killing was predicted. But the Government was try- 
ing to suppress mob violence. A Revolutionary 
Tribunal had been created. People's courts with 
workingmen for judges were administering a crude 
justice. 

With a good deal of difficulty I secured permission 
to visit the fortress. My permit read for seven in 
the evening. I took with me a young woman as in- 
terpreter. The grim fortress is surrounded by a 
massive stone wall and stands on the bank of the 
Neva, opposite the Winter Palace. At the entrance 
soldiers were gathered about a camp-fire. Camp- 
fires burn all over Petrograd. Wherever soldiers 
stand on guard they build a fire for warmth. At 
night the burning logs make the city bright. It is 
like an armed camp. 

In the firelight the great iron-studded wooden gate 
of Peter and Paul looked like the entrance to a me- 
diaeval castle. About the door, rough-looking sol- 
diers, in long coats that came to their ankles, and 
shaggy fur hats, leaned on their bayonets. When I 



Revolutionary Justice 



59 



eOEHO-PEBCnH)l|IOHHblil KOCIMTETI) 
n p H 

IjeHTpajibHOHk HcnoJiHHT KoMHTett 

KoBtxa PaSoiHXi, BojicaTCKHXi « 

KpGCTbSBCKHXi flenyiaTOBi 2 r:) 

BMfocciRccKaro Ei'tsna 

Cil^ACTBEHHAR KOMHCGIR 



HETPOrPAfl-b 
Te>ie(t). 6-36-36 



KoMeKAaHTy (leTpcnaB/iOECKOii KptnocTH. 



•flaHT. cefl nponycK-b orb CntncTeeHHofi 
KoMHCClM BoeHHO-PeeonioulOHHaro KoMHTera 

y^, tlx tM^.,. 

HE Bxoflt B^ neTponasnoBCKyio KptnocTb afwi 




AtleniiTtJikiie T«jikH« iit to ticno n* hotopm iuam*. 



The Permit to the Fortress of Peter and Paul 

entered, and the massive gate clanged to, I felt 
Indeed cut off from the world. 

Through the darkness of the great yard we made 
our way to the Commandant's office. He was not 



6o Behind the Battle Lines 

In, but untidy-looking soldiers examined my pass. 
I must wait, they said. They eyed me curiously and 
spoke to my interpreter. After a little they grew 
friendly and invited me to have a glass of tea. They 
took me into the kitchen — a long, low-ceilinged 
room, with a great stove at one end. There were 
ten or a dozen soldiers. They smoked and talked 
incessantly, dropping cigarette-butts wherever they 
stood. They were dirty, ragged, and unshaven. 
We sat down at a long wooden table, with a steam- 
ing samovar between us. As I grew in favor, sugar, 
butter, and some eatable black bread were produced. 
This was a treat, indeed. It was hard to realize 
who or where I was in that dingy kitchen in the 
grim fortress surrounded by rough soldiers. I felt 
I had fallen asleep and waked up in the midst of the 
French Revolution. 

The soldiers were looking at me curiously. I 
was an American, and they wanted to know about 
America. 

" Why has America gone to war? " 

" Has President Wilson sold out to the capital- 
ists? "_ 

" Will there be a revolution In America? " 

These were the questions poured upon me. Some 
of the men could not read or write, but their knowl- 
edge was extraordinary. It was plain that they had 
but little faith in American democracy. The belief 
that America had sold out was widespread. This 
was the work of German propaganda. 

I tried to answer the questions. I tried to make 
them see America with my eyes. I explained that 
half our country is bourgeois; that there is no work- 
ing class which corresponds to the Russian workman; 
that even the unskilled American worker has some- 
thing to lose; that, in consequence, there cannot be a 



Revolutionary Justice 6i 

revolution in America, such as has occurred in Rus- 
sia. 

They were keenly interested. The majority saw 
my point. They realized that changes in America 
are likely to come by evolution rather than by revo- 
lution. I told them that the President led rather 
than lagged behind the opinion of the majority; that 
he was more liberal and democratic than any presi- 
dent we had had, except Lincoln. But one man, an 
illiterate, was not to be convinced. There was only 
one remedy for inequalities. The working class 
must rise, whether they were a minority or a major- 
ity. The capitalists must be beheaded. He him- 
self would like to behead them one by one. In the 
flickering light I seemed to see him pull out his knife 
and feel of it. But the other men were against such 
methods. They suppressed this firebrand. Their 
intelligence was marvelous. Many had never been 
to school, yet they knew about conditions in both 
America and Europe. Their conversation was not 
confined to wages and food, but dealt with world- 
politics. 

Probably in no other civilized land are there so 
many illiterates. But even the Russians who cannot 
read or write can think and talk. 

By this time the Commandant arrived, and I was 
led forth on my tour of inspection. The massive- 
ness of the old fortress was impressive. The walls 
were several feet thick. No sound could penetrate 
them. The corridors were like vaults. Here one 
was buried alive. 

My request to interview the prisoners was in- 
stantly granted. I was ushered into a cell, and the 
Bolshevik guard withdrew. It was a room twelve 
by fourteen feet in size, with a high ceiling. There 
was one little window far up in the wall. It was im- 



62 Behind the Battle Lines 

possible to see from it, and in the daytime it gave 
scant light. There was a stone floor, and the walls 
had been whitewashed. It looked clean, but cold. 
There was the damp chilly atmosphere of a prison. 
But the one electric light shone brightly. It stood 
on a table by the iron bedstead. The only other fur- 
niture was a chair. 

The occupant of this cell was the former Minister 
of Finance, a man about fifty, with gray hair and 
beard. He courteously offered me the chair and sat 
on the bed. Again I had the sensation of a topsy- 
turvy world. Workingmen with fixed bayonets 
stood at the door, while a learned Minister of Fi- 
nance meekly sat on his prison-bed and talked to me. 
He was studying an English grammar, for he could 
not speak English. We talked together in French. 
He accepted his lot philosophically. He did not 
complain of conditions. He and the others, he said, 
were treated as political offenders. They could have 
food from the outside, and letters and visits from 
their families, and might read and write as much as 
they liked. 

" It's the psychology of the place that is terrible," 
he said, as he rose and paced the floor. " We can't 
tell what will happen. Each moment may be the 
last. Personally, I am not afraid. I don't think 
they'll hurt me. But the others are afraid. Every 
hour they fear a massacre. I do not dare tell my 
wife this. I tell her we are all right. But it is a 
frightful strain." It was indeed a frightful strain. 
Already I was feefing it. The air was charged with 
intense emotion. The Bolshevik soldiers didn't trust 
the Minister of Finance and he didn't trust them. 
Some day the firebrand In the kitchen might be on 
guard. What would happen then? 

I visited other cells. I talked with a Social Dem- 



Revolutionary Justice 63 

ocrat, a man who has fought for Russian freedom 
and Is a well-known economist. He bitterly de- 
nounced the Bolsheviki. 

" Go back to America and tell them what is hap- 
pening here. Tell American Socialists that the Bol- 
sheviki are imprisoning their fellow Socialists. 





# 




M A H E P A 




BPATbEB-b KPOH-b m K° 


^ 3, 


1909. 



The Label from One of the Czar's Smashed Wine Bottles 

Nine times I was imprisoned under the old regime, 
and since the Revolution I have been imprisoned ten 
times. There is little to choose. Both Tsar and 
Bolsheviki are dictators. There is no democracy." 

After this outburst he began to pace the floor rest- 
lessly. His eyes had a haunted look. His words 
were those of the Minister of Finance. 

" It's the uncertainty that's so terrible. Person- 
ally, I'm not afraid. They don't dare hurt me. 
But the others — they are afraid. They are going 



64 Behind the Battle Lines 

to pieces. Every day they expect to be lined up and 
shot. It Is unbearable." 

In each cell It was the same. There was the queer 
restlessness, then the fatal sentence. 

" It Isn't for myself I fear, It's for the others. 
They are afraid." 

Horror seized me. I could bear no more. 

The distrust of the prisoners bred distrust In the 
keepers. Slowly each side was being dragged to 
disaster. Yet outwardly there was no sign of the 
Inner storm. " Peter and Paul " was run on the 
most approved prison methods. 

In addition to the single cells there were two large 
dormitories. In these were Imprisoned army offi- 
cers. I was shown these rooms. The men were 
smoking and playing cards. Here the tension was 
less. Companionship had eased the strain. In one 
room a Russian general rose and addressed me. He 
spoke In French. 

" Well, madame," he said, " what do you think of 
Russia? What do you think of a country that Im- 
prisons Its officers? I don't suppose America does 
that sort of thing? " 

The men crowded around to hear my answer. 

" No," I said, smiling. " Still, America does 
imprison people. It imprisons men who refuse to 
fight." 

At this there was a delighted laugh, and the gen- 
eral continued: " Here, you see, it's the other way. 
We are imprisoned for fighting. There should be 
an exchange of prisoners." 

Even the Bolshevlkl saw the joke and joined In the 
laugh. Certainly it was a topsy-turvy world. 

As we turned to go, my Interpreter spoke to a 
guard. He had been rude, had pushed the generals 
aside and slammed the door. 



Revolutionary Justice 65 

" I hope," she said, " you are good to the pris- 
oners. Remember your own prison days and what 
it was hke." 

The man hung his head. He was like an over- 
grown child. " I do forget," he said, " and I grow 
ugly." 

In that little Incident lay the whole story. Power 
breeds tyrants. No man should have arbitrary con- 
trol of his fellows. As long as there was belief in 
retaliation and punishment life would be ugly. 

A few days later I visited the Revolutionary Tri- 
bunal. I wanted to see how law without law-books 
and precedents was administered. The palace of 
the Grand Duke Nicolas NIcolalvitch had been 
turned Into a court house. It is a massive white 
stone building on the bank of the Neva, near the 
fortress of Peter and Paul. In the old days It was 
gay with music and laughter. A broad marble stair- 
case, covered with a red velvet carpet, led to the ball- 
room. That room was resplendent In silk hangings, 
a gold frieze, and a gorgeous chandelier. It had 
a brightly polished inlaid wooden floor. Many gay 
little slippers had whirled across it. Now it was cov- 
ered with the mark of muddy feet. Dust, ashes, 
and cigarette-butts lay everywhere. The red velvet 
carpet had been pulled awry. The elaborate furni- 
ture was piled up in corners. Streams of working- 
men and soldiers moved In and out. An excited 
crowd was arguing In the corridors. The court- 
room was empty. The judges had retired, angry, 
and refused to sit again that day. The story I got 
was as follows : — 

A man named Branson, a member of the ancient 
Duma, and the secretary of a league for the defense 
of the Constituent Assembly, had been on trial. 
The court-room was filled with his friends and sym- 



66 Behind the Battle Lines 

pathizers. When Branson entered, he was given an 
ovation. The president of the tribunal called for 
order, but the applause and cheers continued. Then 
the president ordered the room cleared. Where- 
upon indignant cries arose. " This is not a tribunal, 
it is a chamber of torture. We will not leave except 
at the point of the bayonet." 

Again the president called upon the soldiers to 
empty the hall. Slowly they moved forward, with 
fixed bayonets, but the public did not stir. The sol- 
diers withdrew into a corner. A workingman 
sprang to his feet and heaped sarcasm upon the tri- 
bunal. The president threatened expulsion, but the 
man merely cried out, " Shoot me down; you cannot 
put me out otherwise." The president ordered the 
man ejected, but he slipped in among the spectators 
and took a seat. From this vantage-ground he again 
hurled out his taunt: " Shoot me down; you cannot 
take me otherwise." The public sided with the man. 
It was impossible to reach him without violence. 
The patience of the court was exhausted. In hot an- 
ger the president and tribunal left. By this time the 
soldiers were angry, and expelled the crowd with no 
gentle hand. 

At this point I arrived. There would be no 
further sitting that day, so I left; but in a few days 
I returned. This time I had a permit, and my in- 
terpreter. 

The court was to open at two. We climbed the 
dirty marble staircase. The air was foul and full of 
smoke. Across one end of the ball-room was a long 
wooden table covered with a red cloth. This was 
the judges' bench. In front were rows of wooden 
benches for the spectators. On one side of the 
judges' bench were other seats, for the prisoners, 



Revolutionary Justice 67 

lawyers, and witnesses. There was no order or 
cleanliness. 

Two o'clock came and went; then three, then four, 
then five. If Germany attempts to systematize Rus- 
sia, she will have her hands full. A Russian is never 
on time. At six o'clock the seven judges filed In. 
They were all workingmen. They had been elected 
by the All-Russian Soviet, the Congress of Working- 
men and Soldiers. Not one of them could boast of 
a clean collar. The president wore a dingy business 
suit. One man's shirt was so dirty that It was im- 
possible to distinguish the color. He was collarless. 

No one rose to greet the court. A group of 
Junkers were to be tried, among them a man named 
Pourlskevltch, a general in the Tsar's army, one of 
the men who had aided in the assassination of Ras- 
putin. Pourlskevltch is a monarchist to the back- 
bone, and hated by the working class. He and his 
companions were accused of forming an organization 
which was to seize the government and restore the 
monarchy. 

The room was packed. The trial had brought 
from hiding a number of titled and wealthy people. 
Most of the women wore Red Cross costumes. 
This was to hide their elegance. But one family, 
a mother and several daughters and some relatives, 
appeared in all their finery. They wore rings and 
diamond brooches and displayed expensive furs. 
They crowded on the bench beside me. There was 
not room for them all, so one of the daughters 
turned to me. She spoke In German (the language 
of the Russian court) : " Will you move to the back 
of the room. We want this bench. One of the 
prisoners is a relative." 

I had been in court four hours. I had sat In my 
seat the whole time, to hold It. I looked up at the 



68 Behind the Battle Lines 

young woman and shook my head. She reddened 
with anger. Her insolence was intolerable. She 
seemed to have forgotten that there had been a revo- 
lution. She planted herself half on me and half on 
the bench. She was very beautiful, but her body 
was as hard and rigid as her face. I found my tem- 
per mounting. I understood the rage of the Bol- 
sheviki at the insolence of the autocracy. I drove 
my elbow with a vicious dig into the young woman. 
She grew furious, but she no longer had power to 
order me to a dungeon. She removed herself from 
my lap, but squeezed in close. I could make no 
impression and gave it up. 

By this time even the aisles were full. Two cooks 
had come up from the kitchen. Their arms were 
bare and they were hot and greasy. Two chairs were 
brought for them by the soldiers. I sat between the 
duchesses and the cooks. Of the two, the cooks had 
the better manners. 

Then there was a great craning of necks. There 
was a sound of tramping feet. The prisoners were 
being led in. In they came, between two rows of 
Bolshevik soldiers. They were in full regimentals. 
Their uniforms were covered with gold braid, and 
they wore a great array of medals. They even had 
spurs on their shining leather boots. They laughed 
and joked like schoolboys. The soldiers who 
guarded them were ragged and dirty. No two had 
uniforms alike. Some wore caps and others fur 
hats. Nothing matched. One or two had their 
feet bound in rags. They looked like the soldiery 
of a comic opera. They ranged themselves along 
the wall and leaned on their bayonets. The whole 
scene was comic. 

Again I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I had 
swallowed a magic pill which had transformed 



Revolutionary Justice 69 

things. Cooks and duchesses; ragged soldiers and 
resplendent generals; collarless workingmen and be- 
wigged and begowned judges, had changed places. 
Even the gaudy ball-room, by a wav^e of the magic 
wand, had become a dirty human meeting-hall. 

Laughter surged to my lips, but something in the 
faces of the judges checked it. The eyes of the sol- 
diers were stern. The family next me was making 
signs to their Junker officer. They jested and 
laughed. They ridiculed the proceedings. The 
Junker officer lay back in his chair and stretched his 
feet out in front of him and grinned. Contempt 
for the court was in every act and look. 

Suddenly I remembered the soldier in the kitchen 
of Peter and Paul and his words, " The capitalists 
must be beheaded. I should like to behead them one 
by one." What were these people thinking of? 
Didn't they realize their danger? 

But now the trial had begun. Pouriskevitch had 
retained an eminent lawyer as his defender. A gray- 
bearded man in a handsome frock coat stepped for- 
ward. He had all the pomp and formality of by- 
gone days. He was over-obsequious to the judges. 
Each wave of his hand was an insult. 

He bowed low and addressed the tribunal. 
" Most reverent and honorable sirs," he began. 

The prisoners giggled. A smile went around the 
court-room. But the tribunal listened with wide- 
open, serious eyes. They struggled to comprehend 
the learned legal arguments. A puzzled frown crept 
over their faces. They consulted one another, but 
the lawyer's eloquent speech flowed on. 

" I am sure," he said, " that this great and honor- 
able tribunal wishes to be just; that the learned gen- 
tlemen on the bench have no thought but justice." 

The biting sarcasm failed to touch the tribunal. 



70 Behind the Battle Lines 

They listened with child-like earnestness. It was pa- 
thetic and magnificent. 

But early in the case there came an interruption. 
Among the prisoners was a man who was not a 
Junker. He had been indicted with the group of 
Monarchists, but he was in reality a Socialist. This 
man's lawyer, also a Socialist, now rose. He used 
no blandishments. He upbraided the tribunal. He 
declared that it was an outrage that his client, a prom- 
inent Socialist, should be classed and tried with the 
despicable Monarchist Pouriskevitch. 

It was as if a bomb had exploded. The court- 
room was in an uproar. Pouriskevitch, red and an- 
gry, was on his feet. " How dare a common Social- 
ist consider it an insult to be tried with me? I am a 
general and a noble." 

It was funny and tragic. One-half the court-room 
glared at the other half. The judges were bewil- 
dered. In the end they ordered the Socialist lawyer 
from the room. They had ignored or failed to com- 
prehend the insults of the eminent counsel, but they 
understood the taunts of the Socialist. Then the 
tribunal consulted together. At last the president 
rose and announced that the court would retire, to 
consider whether the prisoners should be tried to- 
gether or separately. 

It was eight o'clock. I was faint for want of 
food. The tribunal might not return for hours, and 
then it might sit until three in the morning. I de- 
cided to leave. As I pushed my way out, I realized 
again the intense emotional atmosphere of the for- 
tress. Faces were flushed and eyes angry. Hot, 
eager talk spurted up. There was the same battle 
of class against class, the same hatred, the same de- 
sire on the part of each to dominate. Only the 
judges had been serene. They were pitiful and 



Revolutionary Justice 71 

great in their simplicity, their struggle to understand, 
their attempt to be fair. 

From the Nicolai Palace I went to the apartment 
of Maxim Gorky. A few days before, I had been 
there and had met the mother of Tereschenko and 
the wife of Konavello. Tereschenko and Konavello 
were two of the ministers imprisoned in Peter and 
Paul. This mother and wife were tortured by 
anxiety. In their dilemma they turned to Maxim 
Gorky, He was the one intellectual who had not 
deserted the Bolsheviki. He was doing the big 
thing. He criticized, condemned, but tried to help. 
Each day his paper, Novia Jizm, laid bare the faults 
of the Bolshevik government. Hourly he was in 
danger of arrest. But his stand made his home the 
refuge of the oppressed. Workingmen and count- 
esses came to him for aid. Marie Andrievna, 
Gorky's companion for twenty years, and in all but 
legal formality his wife, made a charming hostess. 
It was she who cheered the distressed wife and 
mother and invited them to tea. It was she who 
promised to visit the imprisoned men. It was she 
who told Gorky of Konavello's rheumatism. When 
Gorky heard this, he went to the telephone. Over 
the wire he arranged to have his doctor visit the 
sick man. Tears of gladness and gratitude were in 
the woman's eyes when they left. 

When I reached Maxim Gorky's, after my day 
in court, I was tired and spent, but they listened to 
my story with interest. Then Marie Andrievna told 
me of her day. She had been to Peter and Paul. 
She had seen the imprisoned men. She had found 
Konavello very ill. The prisoners had been through 
a fiery ordeal. In a moment of rashness Konavello 
had written to a friend denouncing the Bolshevik 



72 Behind the Battle Lines 

government and declaring that Russia was being 
delivered over to Germany. This letter came into 
the hands of the soldiers on guard. They were en- 
raged. They cast Konavello into a dungeon, a dark 
cell in the basement, where the walls reeked with 
moisture. When the other prisoners heard of Ko- 
navello's plight, they took counsel together. It was 
agreed that Konavello was too ill to survive such 
treatment. They decided to make a protest. Min- 
isters, generals, and other political prisoners re- 
solved to go on a hunger strike. They were not 
going to be outdone by militant suffragettes. 

The ministers and generals proved effective hun- 
ger-strikers. The soldiers grew worried, then en- 
raged. They led the little community out into the 
yard and lined them up against the wall. " We 
shoot, unless you suspend your strike," was the ulti- 
matum. 

But light came to three Kronstadt sailors. They 
suddenly stepped forward. " What we are doing is 
wrong," they said. " It's against all principles of 
brotherhood. These men shall not be shot, except 
over our dead bodies." 

Their courage won the day. The angel in the 
Russian soldier rose to the surface. The prisoners 
were sent back to their cells, and Konavello was re- 
leased from the dungeon. 

" But," said Marie Andrievna when she had fin- 
ished, " another time it may not turn out that way. 
My heart sickens when I think of the future." 

Since my return to America I have read that two 
of the ministers in Peter and Paul have been put to 
death. One, I believe, was the Minister of Finance. 
The night-guard entered the cells and stabbed the 
men. It was not an act of the Soviet government, 
but a deed of that wild, revengeful force which has 



Revolutionary Justice 73 

been let loose in Russia. The pity of it! For the 
Russian has infinite possibilities. He can be domi- 
nated by high ideals as well as by low. But the 
Soviet government has no time to teach ideals. In 
its desperate struggle to survive, in its fight for equal- 
ity, it uses autocratic methods. 

Only the voice of Gorky rises above the mael- 
strom, pleading for moderation, for patience, for 
fine methods as well as fine principles — pleading for 
spiritual regeneration as well as economic equality. 
These are his words as they appeared one morning 
in his paper, Novia Jizm: 

" The question is. Is the Revolution bringing spirit- 
ual regeneration? Is it making people more honest, 
more sincere? or is man's life as cheap as before? 
Are the new officials as rude as the old? Are the 
old brutalities still in existence? Is there the same 
cruel treatment of prisoners? Does not bribery re- 
main? Is It not true that only physical force has 
changed hands, and that there has been no new spirit- 
ual realization? What is the meaning of life? It 
should be the development of spiritual realization, 
the development of all our capacities for good. 

" The time is not ripe for this. We must first 
take things over by force. That is the answer I 
get. But there Is no poison more dangerous than 
power over others. This we must not forget, or the 
poison will poison us. We shall become worse can- 
nibals than those against whom we have fought all 
our lives. It must be a revolution of the heart and 
brain, but not of the bayonet." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE SOVIETS GOVERNMENT BY THE BOLSHEVIKI 

SMOLNEY INSTITUTE in Petrograd was a 
girls' school in the old days. It still kept the 
ancient title. The ground was deep in snow 
when I made my first visit. The Bolsheviki had 
made the Institute the new seat of government. I 
walked up the straight driveway between snow- 
covered lawns. A large white wooden building 
stretched before me. At one end was a chapel. In 
the colonnaded porch of the center building soldiers 
stood with fixed bayonets and machine guns pointed 
threateningly. 

Inside the outer entrance soldiers with bayonets 
halted me. I must have a pass. I fell into line 
among a row of people. Two young girls with short 
hair were giving out passes. They couldn't speak 
English, but I made them understand I was an Amer- 
ican and a journalist. With a smile they wrote some- 
thing on a scrap of paper. The pass was a sheet 
torn from a tiny note book, stamped with a rubber 
seal and a date scrawled across it. Any one could 
have faked the pass. German spies could enter 
Smolney Institute with ease. Even the Kaiser might 
have risked it. 

The long white corridors were crowded. Sol- 
diers and workingmen moved in and out endlessly. 
They all smoked and cigarette butts and ashes were 
strewn over the floor. Only a short time before 
little girls of the aristocracy paraded these corridors 

74 



The Soviets 



75 




A Pass to Smolney Institute 

arm In arm. The large, clean dormitories were filled 
with little white beds, the big schoolrooms buzzed 
with childish talk. Now the fate of a nation was 
being decided within these walls. 

Unshaven, collarless men littered the floor with 
papers and argued hotly. The schoolrooms had be- 
come meeting halls and the dormitories, subdivided 
by wooden partitions, offices. In the corridors were 
long tables piled high with radical literature. There 
were pamphlets on anarchism, socialism, and syndi- 
calism. All the outcasts of society here had a hear- 
ing. The place was without formality. It had the 
atmosphere of trade union meetings and socialist 
gatherings. It seethed with Intense emotion. It 
was unlike any seat of government ever known. 

There had been no time for adjustments. On the 
white doors down the long corridors large numbers 
were scrawled In blue chalk. These numbers, with 



76 Behind the Battle Lines 



BoeHHO-PEBOniomOH. nponycKi. 

KOMHTCT* "^ 

DETP. C. P. H C. A- flano cie X)(V(XM.'.i<L.>:^-.. \ '— • 

HOMeHflOHTOKiA oratni.. ,,.,.....,...,.....,_ 

l^'^>K\.f^...-..19I7 r. cpOKOM-b n o^ ..<^..ftr^k^..L.^. 

Ha npaBo CBOoojiHaro Bxofla bt> Lmojib- 
CMOJibHbitt. HHCTHiyn.. 

- Hblft HHCTHTyi-b. 

An/ionpouaeodumejib 



A Journalist Pass to Smolney Institute and the Meetings 
of the Soviet 

the names of the committees occupying the rooms, 
had been written out by hand on a slip of paper and 
tacked to the wall. The rooms of the commis- 
sares, the Bolshevik ministers, were equally haphaz- 
ardly designated. Scribbled across a sheet of paper 
was the simple statement " Commissare Trotsky's 
Office," and this was stuck to his door with a pin. 

Visions arose of the stately houses of Parliament 
or the prosperous Capitol at Washington, and I 
smiled. 

But the informality was refreshing. You could 
speak to any one, provided you could hold them for 
talk. For it was a rushing world. Plots and coun- 
terplots were being unfolded. The food was run- 
ning low, the city was in a state of upheaval. The 



The Soviets 77 

Bolshevik! were having a hard fight. Their control 
was limited to the central government. The soldiers 
and workers' deputies had become the Russian Con- 
gress, or Soviet. But even this body had its diffi- 
culties. It was the first to purge itself. All mem- 
bers not Bolsheviki or Social Revolutionaries left. 
They numbered perhaps a fourth of the whole. 
Their places were quickly filled by Bolsheviki. The 
Soviet, which represented all Russia, now consisted 
of only the most radical elements. Bolshevik min- 
isters were made the executive arm of the Congress, 
and called the " People's Commissares." 

But the Bolsheviki did not control the city govern- 
ment. The Petrograd Municipal Duma had been 
elected under Kerensky. Most of the members were 
Cadets — Liberals. 

Conflict immediately arose between the city gov- 
ernment and the Central Power. The Municipal 
Duma would not take orders. It refused to recog- 
nize the Soviet. The members went on strike. The 
National power grew angry. They declared the 
Duma dissolved and ordered a new election. The 
Commissares issued the following decree: 

" All employees of government institutions who 
strike or sabotage in their work are declared enemies 
of the people. Their names will be printed in the 
government paper and in lists which will be posted on 
the walls of public buildings. All those who won't 
work with the people have no place among the peo- 
ple." 

The Duma did not take its fate meekly. It re- 
fused to dissolve or consent to a new election. It 
maintained it had been elected by secret ballot and 
that no one, neither the former provisional govern- 
ment, nor the Bolshevik Soviet could dissolve it. A 
few members dissented. They were Socialists. 



78 Behind the Battle Lines 

They said public opinion had changed and a new 
election was just. But they were voted down. In 
an impassioned speech Mayor Schreider declared : 

" We will remain at our post and continue to work 
by virtue of our right until the expiration of our 
term of office. We will defend to the last moment 
and with the last drop of blood, the rights which 
have been intrusted to us by the people. For us the 
decree of the Soviet does not exist. We recognize 
only that law which can be changed or modified by 
the Constituent Assembly." But the Central Power 
was not to be defied. Soldiers with bayonets entered 
the Duma, turned out the members and closed the 
hall, and a new election was ordered. The irate 
members were helpless. There were no soldiers 
to defend them. They met secretly and inserted the 
following announcement in their paper: 

" By order of the usurpers of power, the Duma 
was dissolved, but it still exists. Immediately after 
the attack, it united in another locality and continued 
to work on the question of unemployment. In spite 
of the violence of bayonets the Duma continues to 
guard the city's welfare, but the population which 
elected us must come to our aid. 

" Citizens, all the liberties we have conquered are 
menaced. 

" Protest against those who trample under foot 
our rights. 

" The city is in danger from cold and starvation. 
Organize meetings of protest. Pass resolutions. 
At these meetings let the following be your watch- 
words: 

" Down with autocratic Commissares. 

" Down with stranglers of Liberty. 

" Down with the saboteurs of the city administra- 
tion. 



The Soviets 79 

" Long live universal suffrage, direct, equal and 
secret. 

" Long live the legal autonomy of the municipality. 

" Long live the liberty of citizens. 

" Long live the Constituent Assembly." 

But Petrograd did not rally to the support of the 
Duma. The soldiers and workers remained faith- 
ful to the Central Government. The power of the 
Boisheviki grew. In every department there were 
the same struggles. Many officials were Cadets 
(Liberals) or moderate Socialists. They refused 
to resign or recognize the new government. They 
hoped for a counter revolution. But this hope was 
short lived. It depended on the peasants. They 
as a body had not joined the Soviet. A meeting was 
called of the All Russian Peasants Congress in Pet- 
rograd. The first business was the election of a 
president. Chernov received 369 votes and Marie 
Spiradonova 329. Chernov is a Menshevik, a So- 
cial Democrat of the right. 

Marie Spiradonova is a Bolshevik, a Social Dem- 
ocrat of the extreme left. 

Though Chernov was elected president, it was 
Spiradonova's faction that grew. A week later, by 
a large majority, it was voted to send peasant dele- 
gates to sit with the Workers and Soldiers Deputies. 
The Soviet had become a Congress of Workers, 
Peasants and Soldiers. 

In the winter of 19 18 the representatives of 75 
per cent, of the population were Boisheviki. The 
other 25 per cent., the monarchists, the capitalists, 
the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals, were without 
representation. They refused to remain in the Soviet 
. and they had no voice. Chernov at the Peasants' 
Congress, which still continued to meet as a separate 
body, cried out: "Newspapers are being sup- 



8o Behind the Battle Lines 

pressed. Tyranny is in the land. But they cannot 
suppress my voice. I will speak." 

He was far too popular and radical for interfer- 
ence. He spoke on, but his power waned. Slowly 
the working class government took shape. Dumas 
and Zemstvos the country over were abolished. 
Local Soviets took their place. There were village, 
city and district Soviets. They were made up of 
workers, peasants, and soldiers. The local Soviets 
were autonomous in local matters, but their decrees 
had to accord with the fundamental principles laid 
down by the Central Power. The District Soviets, 
like the Central, appointed Commissares who could 
aid and strengthen the small local Soviets of the dis- 
trict. 

Meanwhile the national government steadied. It 
began to issue decrees. Property was the main ob- 
ject attacked. The right to private ownership in 
land was abolished. Henceforth all land belonged 
to the nation. It was to be confiscated and parceled 
out to the farmers according to the needs of each 
family. The distribution was to be made by the 
local Soviets. But the Soviets were slow. Some 
had not been organized. The peasants grew impa- 
tient. As in the days of Kerensky they took the law 
into their own hands. The rough elements seized 
what they wanted. 

One family I visited employed a maid servant 
from the country. She was a crude little creature, 
with big rough hands and ill fitting clothes. She 
worshiped her employers. She kissed the members 
of the family when they came or went. She guarded 
their interests as her own. I asked her about her 
village. Had there been violence there? 

" Yes," she said with anger in her tone, " the 
hooligans seized the big estate. They murdered the 



The Soviets 8i 

family, even the five year old child. They found 
wine in the wine cellar and got drunk. They de- 
stroyed the house, divided the furniture and seized 
the land. They had no right to take other people's 
things. The land belonged to the peasants, but not 
the house and furniture." She turned to her em- 
ployer and said, " I work for you. Suppose I took 
your things. Tve no right to them." 

Her point of view was mteresting. I asked the 
girl if she cared for her home. Her face became 
radiant. The tiny strip of land and the two-room 
cottage were her passion. Every penny earned went 
to her people. She lived for the annual two months' 
vacation. " My own home and my own people are 
the best," she said shyly. I asked her if she was a 
Bolshevik. " No," she said fiercely, " for they say 
things with their tongue, but they don't do them." 

In another family I ran across another country 
girl. She had come to the city to be a seamstress. 
In her village there was a big estate. The owner 
was popular with the peasants. A meeting was held 
and it was agreed not to touch him or his possessions. 
But as time went on temptation grew. When the 
owner and his family went to the city his land was 
seized and his house destroyed. 

Another interesting decree dealt with houses and 
apartments. These were no longer private prop- 
erty. But the owner might continue to live in his 
house provided he occupied only a small portion. 
The part he retained must not exceed a rental of a 
thousand roubles. Worked out in practice this lim- 
ited a family to one room per person. 

Such a decree could not be carried out. There 
was no machinery to enforce it. It was ignored by 
people in general, but when the Government needed 
extra rooms they went to a rich's man's house and 



82 Behind the Battle Lines 

took possession. Some householders resorted to 
tricks. One man Invited a trade union organization 
to occupy the parlor floor. Nightly excited voices 
arose from the drawing-room. The mahogany fur- 
niture was kicked and banged, but the owner kept 
his house unmolested. 

Still another decree dealt with clothing. This was 
not to exceed a certain amount and a certain value. 
No man might have more than one fur coat. The 
number of blankets was limited. Every one was 
requested to make an inventory and surrender the 
extras to a soldier at the front or a shivering mortal 
at home. Of course lies were told. It was impos- 
sible to enforce this decree. Occasionally soldiers 
visited the wealthier homes. They inventoried the 
premises and carried off the extras. To the prop- 
erty owners such proceedings were heartbreaking. 
Capitalists and bourgeoisie turned their eyes toward 
the Constituent Assembly as their one hope. The 
Assembly was to meet on December nth. Many 
members had been elected before or at the time of 
the Bolshevik revolution. The Constituency repre- 
sented all classes. The Conservatives determined 
to concentrate their fight on this event. 

Meanwhile the Bolshevik Government grew daily 
more unfriendly to the Constituent Assembly. That 
body would be full of Cadets. Cadets were enemies 
of the people. At first these sentiments were ut- 
tered timidly. To supplant the Assembly with the 
All Russian Soviet would take time. The people 
had been taught to regard the Assembly as the 
culmination of all hopes. 

The monarchists and capitalists were clever. Se- 
cretly they were hatching plots for counter revolution. 
Kaledlne and the Cossacks were to march on Pet- 
rograd and seize the Government. But these efforts 



The Soviets 83 

except when discovered and exposed by the Commls- 
sares, were kept dark. Outwardly the Conserva- 
tives asked for but one thing, representation. The 
Constituent Assembly must meet. Every one must 
have a voice. Shrewdly they let the radical intellec- 
tuals Chernov and Zeretelli do the talking. These 
men were Socialists. They were Bolsheviki in prin- 
ciple but not in method. They believed in a revolu- 
tion by the vote, but not by the sword. They were 
feared by the Commissares. Their power was great. 
They could not be downed. The peasant was will- 
ing to behead the capitalist, but these men were 
loved. 

Several days before the opening of the Assembly 
meetings were held. One Sunday morning I went 
to hear Zeretelli. The meeting was in a great circus. 
The place holds six thousand. It was jammed. 
Zeretelli is dying of consumption. He has spent 
seven years in penal servitude and given his life to 
the cause of Russian freedom. He is pale and thin 
and his eyes are sunken. No one has ever doubted 
his honesty and sincerity. He spoke with passion. 
He declared the time was not ripe for a working 
class government. There must be a coalition. 
Socialists and capitalists must unite. All must be 
represented. The Assembly must meet. The de- 
crees must be made by that body. They must be 
the product of the vote of the whole people. 

This speech brought thunderous applause. But 
it was not passionate applause. The meeting lacked 
fire. The audience was made up of doctors, lawyers, 
bankers, school teachers, and shop keepers. There 
were no factory workers and only a few soldiers 
present. Reason was stronger than emotion. 

On December i ith there was a parade as a demon- 
stration for the Assembly. The Soviet paper 



84 Behind the Battle Lines 

requestecJ the Bolshevik! not to take part. I was out 
early and wandered about the streets. At ten the 
line began to form. Riots were expected. It was 
feared the two parties would clash. But except for a 
few bullets fired by an over-excited man, I saw no 
violence. There were ten thousand in line. A Bol- 
shevik demonstration would have brought out fifty to 
seventy thousand. The marchers v/ere all well 
dressed. They walked and talked quietly. They 
sang solemnly and sincerely. They were the bour- 
geoisie and the intellectuals with an occasional capi- 
talist. None of the proletariat and only a few well 
dressed soldiers joined. The crowd lacked passion. 
They did not seethe with life. They moved to the 
Tauride Palace, the meeting place of the Assembly. 
They swept up to the doors. But Bolshevik soldiers 
guarded the entrance and they turned back. They 
marched down a side street. They had no plan. I 
watched three men with particular interest. They 
were lawyers or bankers. They wore fur coats and 
fur caps. They and the others were singing the 
Marseillaise. Over their heads waved a red flag on 
which was written " Land to the Peasants." On 
the sidewalk factory workers and unshaven soldiers 
stood and jeered. Surely I had gone crazy. It 
wasn't possible that the moneyed class were marching 
in the middle of the street under a red flag singing 
the Marseillaise, demonstrating against the Govern- 
ment, and shouting for freedom. 

At two the Assembly was to open. Only 194 of 
the 800 delegates had arrived in Petrograd. Of 
that number three dozen or so presented themselves. 
Those with certificates or passes were allowed to 
enter the palace. 

The ballroom had been turned into a legislative 
hall. It was filled with raised seats and desks ar- 



The Soviets 85 

ranged in a semi-circle. The handful of members 
proceeded to convene. Mayor Schreider, the Mayor 
of the dissolved Duma, took the rostrum: 

" I declare," he said, " the Constituent Assembly 
open." 

Chernov was then elected president. He took his 
place and announced that three Cadets (Liberals) 
members of the Assembly had just been arrested. 
A motion was made and carried to make public the 
following declaration: 

" The Constituent Assembly refuses to recognize 
the brutal force which has arrested its members and 
declares those members free." Before adjourning 
it was agreed to meet the next day. In closing, 
Chernov said: 

" When this body meets regularly the power will 
pass from the hands of the usurpers to us. It is we 
alone who can make peace and give land and liberty 
to the people. Long live the Constituent Assem- 
bly." 

Next day I went back to the palace. Eight thou- 
sand soldiers had been placed in neighboring bar- 
racks. The palace itself was well guarded. Sol- 
diers with bayonets were at every entrance. Small 
detachments moved about the buildings and grounds. 
One company was sprawled upon the floor of a big 
room. They had their knapsacks for head rests 
and were fast asleep. Several of the correspondents 
gathered in a corridor to talk. Immediately sol- 
diers stepped up, and told us to move on. Meantime 
thirty or forty delegates straggled in. They were 
the professor type. They wore frock coats. There 
wasn't a working man among them. They were jos- 
tled by the soldiers and not allowed to form in 
groups. They withdrew to the library. Here they 
began to hold a meeting. The Commandant of the 



86 Behind the Battle Lines 

Palace appeared. He said their meeting must stop; 
that the council of Commissaries would announce 
when they could meet; that first, all Cadets must be 
arrested. Then a delegate jumped up. " Will you 
arrest a member of the Assembly?" he asked. 
" Certainly," said the Commandant. " If he is a 
Cadet, for they are enemies of the people. They 
are not Assembly members, only the proletariat can 
hold such an office." 

But the little group refused to retire and the Com- 
mandant withdrew. They hadn't a quorum. It 
was useless to hold meetings until more members 
reached Petrograd. They decided to publish the 
following statement: 

" People of Russia, do you know how the new des- 
pots treat your representatives? All the rooms in 
the Tauride Palace are closed. It is clear to the 
whole world that the promise of the Bolsheviki to 
speedily unite the Assembly is a lie. They make that 
promise to hold their power. They promise one 
thing and hope another. When our number in- 
creases and we are strong we will return to the pal- 
ace. We will not give in to the usurpers. Be ready 
to fight for the Constituent Assembly." 

This was signed by Chernov and 109 members. 
They had hardly finished when the Commandant 
returned with soldiers. The members were ordered 
out and one man was forcibly ejected. It was the 
last meeting in the palace. The Commissaries had 
taken up the fight in earnest. Trotsky and Lenine 
were making impassioned speeches. They issued 
the following statement: 

" A handful of people are trying to open the As- 
sembly. They do this that they may declare their 
counter revolutionary actions legal. All the con- 



The Soviets 87 

quests of the Revolution are in jeopardy. The Peo- 
ple's Commissaries bring this plot to the attention 
of the public." 

The Commissaries had grown bolder. They be- 
gan to attack the Assembly openly. They had been 
successful in the new Duma election. The total votes 
cast was only one-half of the 900,000 votes of the 
preceding election, but practically all the votes were 
for the Bolsheviki. The new Municipal Duma had 
convened and the new mayor had opened with the 
following remark: 

" I salute the victory of the proletariat over the 
bourgeoisie. Greetings to the People's Commissaries. 
Let us proceed to socialize property. Let us carry 
out the decrees of the Council. Long live the Com- 
mune." 

Encouraged by this spirit, the Commissaries issued 
two decrees. One declared all Cadets enemies of the 
people and demanded they be arrested immediately 
and brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. 

The other granted the right to a new election on 
the petition of one-fourth of the electors, and gave 
the power of recall. At a meeting at Smolney Insti- 
tute of the Soviet, Trotsky and Lenine defended 
these decrees and their messages. Said Lenine: 

" In the midst of a civil war one must not make a 
fetich of the Constituent Assembly. It is the bour- 
geoisie and Cadets who have dragged us into strife. 

" Around the Cadets all counter revolutionary ele- 
ments gather. Shall we then convoke the Assembly 
as it originally was elected? To do so is to gather 
together counter revolutionary forces. This must 
not be." 

But such doctrines were not calmly accepted. In- 
stantly a soldier was on his feet protesting. 



88 Behind the Battle Lines 

" You cannot arrest a whole party. If you use 
these methods with the Cadets you will use it with 
others. Soon there will be no Assembly." 

Then Trotsky sprang to his feet. 

*' It is impossible to collaborate with elements 
against whom we are obliged to send troops. Rus- 
sia is divided into two camps, the bourgeois and the 
proleteriat. It is not immoral to achieve the fall of 
the bourgeois. You are indignant at these terroris- 
tic methods, but if they are not used, in a month, 
methods more menacing will be applied. It will 
become the terror of the French revolution. For 
our enemies it will not be the fortress but the guillo- 
tine." 

Feeling was now at white heat. Only the Assem- 
bly was talked of. To be or not to be that was the 
question. 

An exciting debate was expected in the Soviet or 
Congress. I determined to attend the meeting. 
Unfortunately no cars were running. The electric 
wires had been tampered Avith. It was thought to 
be the work of some counter revolutionary. It was 
four miles to Smolney Institute but I plowed through 
the snow. The school ballroom was the Soviet 
headquarters. The white walls and woodwork 
were growing dim. The hard wood floor had long 
since lost its polish. But the gay chandelier flooded 
the place with light. The Soviet delegates were out 
in full force. They were a serious and earnest body. 
Intelligence was writ large across their faces. They 
were without self consciousness. Most of the men 
were in dingy uniforms for both the factory workers 
and the peasants are all in the army. The air was 
thick with smoke. The place hummed with talk. 
The Commissaries mixed with the delegates. No ex- 
tra reverence was shown them. Trotsky and Lenine 



The Soviets 89 

pushed their way with the others to the platform. 
It is a genuine working class government. No of- 
ficial receives more than 500 roubles (at the present 
rate of exchange in Russia $50) a month. He may- 
use the government automobiles, but he has to eat 
and sleep with the workers. 

It was Trotsky who spoke first. He is a man of 
medium size with a large well shaped head. His 
hair is thick; his forehead high, his eye bright and 
keen. His chin is small and weak, but this is hidden 
by mustache and short beard. He stoops slightly. 
He is simple and direct in manner and without affec- 
tation. He speaks with passion and plays upon his 
audience's emotion. His feeling about the Assembly 
was tense. His words came thick and fast. 

" The question of calling the Assembly is entirely 
different from Kerensky's time. The right of im- 
munity of the members is raised. But there is an- 
other right that is higher, that is the right of the 
revolutionary people. In declaring the Cadets our 
enemies we have only made a beginning. We have 
not yet executed any one (cries of — "We are 
against the death penalty"). Yes! That is true, 
but if the conspiracies of the Cadets and Kaledinists 
disorganize the country, not one of us can guaranty 
that in their legitimate anger the people will not turn 
against the bourgeoisie and the Cadets. No one of 
us can say that the people exasperated will not raise 
the guillotine in the public square in front of the 
Winter Palace." 

At this point Trotsky's voice was drowned. The 
room was in commotion. Every one talked. Then 
a social revolutionist sprang to his feet. Order was 
restored and he began to speak. 

" However much we believe in fighting, counter 
revolutionary forces, we cannot declare all Cadets 



90 Behind the Battle Lines 

enemies of the people and refuse to let them sit in the 
Assembly, To do this will end in excluding the 
moderate socialists. Finally there will be no Assem- 
bly. The peasants and workers look on the As- 
sembly as the final coup, the expression of the 
national will. They will not understand. It will 
bring on bloody revolution. 

" Lenine and Trotsky after making an end of 
Cadets will turn against their socialist friends. If 
in their dreams they see Marat and Robespierre, let 
them not forget Robespierre's end and that which 
came after. The Russian revolution can be pushed 
to the same end. 

" In this chamber it should not be only words of 
hate that are heard, there should also be words of 
love. Our revolution before all else was waged in 
the name of justice." 

Thus the battle raged. But in the end Trotsky 
won. The decree declaring all Cadets enemies of 
the people and excluding them from the Assembly 
was adopted by a big majority. The Assembly's 
fate was sealed. 

I left before the vote was taken. I knew there 
would be a battle royal in the Peasants' Congress. 
They too were debating the future of the Assembly. 
Another correspondent and myself made our way to 
the town hall. The cars were still not running. 
We were both dead tired. By a bit of luck we got 
a sleigh. It was biting cold, but the four miles back 
to the Nevsky Prospect was soon covered. We 
mounted the steps of the Duma building. We went 
in the back way. We knew the place would be 
jammed. No East Side Socialist gathering ever 
equaled that crowd for emotion. The place 
throbbed with the life of the whole world. The 
Peasants' Congress still retained Chernov and his 



The Soviets 91 

faction. They sat on the right, the Bolshevik! on 
the left. It was like some great musical drama. 
The rise and falls, the cadences, the stops, the 
streams of talk, the bursts of passion. Marie Spi- 
radonova, a tiny wraith of a woman, controlled the 
left. She is adored by the peasants. Her years of 
torture in exile have made her a god. She can do 
no wrong. There were hot words and hisses, but 
her tiny hand quelled and quieted the great peasants. 
" Let the other side speak," she kept saying, " let 
the other side speak." 

While Chernov from his side stirred his group to 
new endeavor, his great head with its mass of hair 
waved and tossed, his fists pounded the desk. The 
room when I entered was in the throes of a struggle. 
Should Lenine be allowed to speak or shouldn't he? 
He pushed his way through the seething people to 
the platform. There were hisses, cries, bursts of 
applause, a maddening uproar. Chernov called 
loudly for Lenine's ejection. He had no right in the 
Peasants' Congress. Finally quiet was restored and 
a vote taken. By a large majority it was voted Len- 
ine should speak. He is a small man. Not at all 
radical in appearance. The front of his head is quite 
bald. His face is clean shaven except for a small 
mustache. His manner is simple. He started in 
like a college professor reading a lecture. He didn't 
pound or rant. But in a few moments the crowd was 
still. His words burnt in. Each one came liquid 
clear. It was like a stream that started small and 
clean and grew to a deep swift running river. The 
man was sincere, a fanatic, but an idealist. I found 
myself swept along, throbbing and beating with every 
emotion of the great rough peasants. My reason 
was against what was being done. I didn't believe 



92 Behind the Battle Lines 

in winning by force. I believed in democracy. I 
believed every one should have a voice. The bour- 
geoisie were not all bad, nor the proletariat all good. 
The right could be risked to the decision of all man- 
kind. If the majority were not for it, it would not 
last. Not a class conscious but a world conscious de- 
cision of right was what was needed. Yet in spite 
of my belief I found myself shouting and clamor- 
ing with the left. It was infectious. The peasants 
were so simple and true. There were no ifs and 
buts about them. They had been beaten and abused 
and underfed and left to fight the Germans with 
naked fists. The moneyed class had betrayed them. 
The aristocracy had allowed Germany to flood the 
land, monopolize the Government and seize the busi- 
ness. With a mighty effort this beastly tyranny had 
been overthrown. Now they were told the Cadets 
were betraying them, they were like the moneyed 
class of old. Well then, down with all Cadets. 
The Assembly must meet, but the Cadets must go. 
Through all this surge of feeling, gradually the 
words of Lenine stood out: 

" Only people without consciences can say the Bol- 
shevik Government is a menace to the peasants. 
Nine-tenths of the army is composed of peasants, or 
to put it another way, the guns are in the hands of 
the peasants. It is just because the power of the 
Soviets rests on the mass of the people that no force 
in the world can go against them. The conspirators, 
the Kalidinists, are isolated, and they must succumb 
wherever they are, even if they are members of the 
Assembly. The people are not made for the Con- 
stituent Assembly, but the Assembly for the people. 
That body ought to consolidate our victory, but it 
doesn't. It does not reflect the opinion of the 



The Soviets 93 

masses. Why then should you hesitate. You have 
not hesitated to take the land from the capitalist, 
why should you hesitate to take from him his vote? 

" The Soviet will arrest all who do not recognize 
the Soviet. The Assembly will not be convoked un- 
til 400 loyal members have assembled." 

For a moment there was quiet. Then came tu- 
mult. 

As Lenine walked from the room the left rose. 
They shouted, they stamped, they cheered. It was 
deafening. The hisses of the opposition were 
drowned. But Chernov was on his feet demanding 
a hearing. It took some minutes to restore order. 
He was irritated. He spoke with heat. Somehow 
his words missed their mark. His gestures seemed 
artificial. His oratory after Lenine's simplicity was 
unconvincing. He seemed to be hurling rocks into 
a rushing stream. It didn't stem the current. Yet 
he had reason on his side. His words were ap- 
plauded by the right, but scorned by the left. What 
he said was: 

" The Commissaries usurp the rights of the Con- 
stituent Assembly. They do not openly agitate the 
dissolution of that body but proceed by underhand 
means. They arrest isolated deputies. If the Ca- 
dets are guilty of a plot, the Assembly itself should 
suspend their parliamentary immunity. Even in the 
days of the Czar socialist members were not arrested 
until the Duma had been asked to suspend immunity. 
But the Commissaries know no law. They push the 
Soviet against the Assembly. It is time the Soviet 
rose and demanded that these dictators, these Com- 
missaries, return to them their power so that they in 
turn may place that power in the hands of the As- 
sembly." 

When he finished men sprang up all over the floor. 



94 Behind the Battle Lines 

Hot words flew back and forth. One peasant on 
the left cried out: " Long live the Constituent Assem- 
bly, but if it goes against the will of the workers it is 
the last time I will utter that cry." 

At eleven o'clock Trotsky entered. But the audi- 
ence was in no temper for a speech. The left saw 
to defend him was useless. The right had grown 
ugly. They hurled taunts at Trotsky. " Down 
with the drinker of blood. Put him out," they 
yelled. Then a motion was made to demand the im- 
mediate opening of the Assembly. A violent strug- 
gle ensued but the motion passed by a vote of 360 
to 321. 

That night I trudged back to my house full of 
conflicting emotions. Russia and Russia's problems 
were not easy to solve. When I reached the Le- 
teiney Prospect I hurried into my door. To be out 
at midnight was neither safe nor comfortable. 
There was only one light on each street. There 
wasn't fuel for more. It would have been difficult to 
see but for the glistening white snow. I was weary 
from my enforced walks. I fell promptly to sleep. 
Then bang, bang. I woke with a start. Another 
bang. I sprang from my bed and rushed to the 
window. The street was empty. Then I saw a 
couple of people running and stooping low. They 
dashed into the doorway of the telegraph office op- 
posite. Then bang, bang, more shots. Instinc- 
tively I knew what it was. The soldiers were loot- 
ing the wine shop on the corner. If they stuck to the 
wine it would be all right, but suppose in their 
drunkenness they besieged our apartment. My 
heart beat violently. We were on the fifth floor. 
Surely they wouldn't climb so high. But suppose 
they began shooting at windows. A fifth story win- 
dow was a long shot. I went back to bed. The 



The Soviets 95 

shots continued but gradually they died out. Ex- 
cited voices rose from the street. What a tempestu- 
ous life it was; so full of good and ill. What would 
come of it? One must have patience. The changes 
were too great and sudden to come without violence. 
By a mighty swing of life's pendulum the land had 
been torn from the aristocracy. No Czar could ever 
again declare property sacred. 

But the change was too great. The pendulum 
had swung too far left. It could not remain there. 
It must swing back, that was a law of nature. Russia 
had swung clean out of the Twentieth Century. 
Whether she will come back with a rush and a coun- 
ter revolution or gradually slow down and stop like 
the pendulum in the center is a question hard to an- 
swer. Only unselfishness and self-sacrifice can save 
Russia from further bloodshed and turbulence. 
Progress comes in two ways, by revolution and strife, 
by jerks forward and back, or a slow and steady 
march onward. The latter way is the way of an en- 
lightened civilization. But as yet there has been no 
race of men great enough to achieve it. For it 
means that a nation must live in the present but 
work for the future. It means that peasant as well 
as capitalist must seek nothing for himself. It 
means that each must give of his home, his country, 
his life if a fair and decent world is to be built for 
the children of the future. The peasant in the Soviet 
who cried out " words of love, not words of hate, 
should be spoken in this Assembly," struck the right 
note. What Russia needs to-day is not more force 
but understanding sympathy, encouragement and 
love. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE GERMANS IN PETROGRAD 

SHOULD I wait until they came? I knew the 
things I had written about Germany made cap- 
ture fatal. I had no desire to be interned in a 
German prison camp. Was it a delegation or a 
whole army of Germans that was marching on Pet- 
rograd. No one seemed certain. But it was too 
exciting to miss. I stayed on. As a matter of fact 
the German delegation slipped in quietly enough. 
They made hardly a ripple. There were sixty Ger- 
mans in all, twenty-five official delegates and thirty 
or more secretaries and technicians. They were 
lean and hungry looking and very stiff and funny. 
They were like posts of wood sticking out of a surg- 
ing ocean. They bore no resemblance to the throb- 
bing Russian masses. It is important to remember 
this in predicting future relations between Russia 
and Germany. 

The Russians are individualists. They cannot be 
permanently conquered. Temporary domination 
will only result in the lid flying off. They are a free 
thinking race. Their country is full of Republican 
traditions. In the early days the provinces were 
ruled by princes elected by the people. The first 
Romanoff was chosen Czar by the people. It is the 
Germans who have foisted bureaucracy and tyranny 
upon Russia. The whole upper stratum of society 
was of German importation. Even in the day^s of 

96 



The Germans in Petrograd 97 

Czarism the peasant village life was one of pure 
democracy. They had their town meetings or mir. 
They discussed public affairs. They worked things 
out together. No one man was better than another. 
That is the reason that to-day even the Russians who 
can't read or write can think and talk. Contrast this 
with German life before the war. The German sat 
in his beer garden fat and content. He lived on 
time. He took his pleasures methodically. He 
obeyed those above him. To obey, to be a machine, 
not to think, to live on time are qualities the Slav 
does not possess. He eats at all hours, talks half 
the night, drinks tea incessantly, argues hotly and 
is a revolutionist at heart. When Slavs and Teu- 
tons meet something explodes. 

The Russian is the dynamo, the German becomes 
the scattered remnants. This accounts for the great 
changes in Russia. The dynamo went off and the 
Russian bureaucrat and his German brother were 
wiped off the map. All we need is patience and Rus- 
sia will revolutionize Germany. But if such antag- 
onism exists between the Russian masses and the 
German Government why was peace made? There 
are three reasons : 

First because 7,000,000 Russians had been killed 
or wounded and the country was bankrupt and hun- 
gry. 

Second because the Russians were too busy carry- 
ing on a revolution to wage a war. 

Third because Karl Marx was born in Germany 
and the Russians believed that if peace was made 
their German Socialist brothers would rise. 

This accounts for Brest Litosk. But never for a 
moment was there friendship between the Russian 
worker and the German Government. The Rus- 
sians clamored for a general, not a separate peace, 



98 Behind the Battle Lines 

without annexations or indemnities. The Kaiser lis- 
tened coldly to such a proposition. He had no use 
for a Bolshevik Government. The German papers 
ridiculed Russia. On October 3rd, 191 7, the Frank- 
furter Zeitiing declared " The Democratic peace pro- 
posals of the Soviet are absolutely inacceptable to any 
German." But hardly had the paper uttered the 
words when trouble began. The German workers 
had heard the call of the Russians. There were 
strikes everywhere; 300 independent Socialists were 
arrested and imprisoned. In Austria there were 80 
manifestations and the watchword was " Not an- 
other bullet, but immediate peace." In Budapest 
150,000 people took part in a demonstration. The 
Kaiser was frantic. The jig was up. His days 
were numbered. But then he had an idea. He 
loathed the red flag of revolution, but if he made 
friends with the Bolsheviki he could fool his people. 
He could make them believe he wanted peace. And 
another brilliant idea dawned on him. If he played 
with the Russians he could perhaps get them to dis- 
band their army. When the soldiers had left the 
front and the country was disorganized he would 
turn and deal Russia a swift blow. He would tear 
down the red flag which threatened his throne and 
put back the Czar. So reasoned his imperial maj- 
esty. Deliberately with malice aforethought he 
held out a hand to the ragged fiery revolutionist. 
At first he egged the Russians on in their clamor for a 
general peace. The Central Powers wanted a gen- 
eral peace on their own terms. Each day internal 
conditions in Germany grew worse. Thus it was 
that the Kaiser went out to meet the Bolsheviki. It 
was like Goliath going out to meet David. It was 
funny and tragic. At Brest Litosk the two delega- 



The Germans in Petrograd 99 

tlons met. The Russian delegates were scrubby un- 
shaven tired workingmen. They wore blouses, 
faded uniforms and dilapidated business suits. 
They were met in state by Leopold, Prince of Ba- 
varia, General Hoffman and other dignitaries, clad 
in resplendent uniforms with leather boots and clink- 
ing spurs, and shining medals. This imposing array 
stood rigidly heel to heel and hand to cap. But the 
Russian worker, unabashed, stepped forward with 
outstretched hand and said " brother." It was like 
a clap of thunder. The earth shook. The Teu- 
tonic officials nearly lost their dignity. Such free- 
dom was scandalous. It must be kept from the peo- 
ple. Large automobiles hurried the Russians to a 
hotel. There they were carefully hidden away. 
Soldiers were stationed about the hotel. No dele- 
gate was allowed to walk out or talk to the people. 
The delegates were made prisoners but royal prison- 
ers. Everything was done to entice and corrupt 
them. " Will you walk into my parlor, said the 
spider to the fly? " They were given suites of rooms 
with baths. Each bathroom ostentatiously dis- 
played a cake of soap. There was writing paper 
and cigarettes on the tables. But the Russian was 
incorruptible. He loves freedom. Physical com- 
fort counts for little. He didn't like riding around 
in an automobile with a German soldier as nurse. 
He grew restless. He began to ask embarrassing 
questions. "What about Liebknecht? " "Why 
had 300 independent Socialists been arrested?" 
" Why couldn't they meet the German people, they 
didn't want to talk to officers?" At last the ill 
assorted group settled down to business. The Rus- 
sians began at once to talk peace. But the stiff and 
haughty Germans shook their heads. Only the 



lOO Behind the Battle Lines 

heaven-sent Kaiser could talk of civil affairs and 
peace. They had come merely to discuss the tech- 
nical details of an armistice. " Oh, very well," said 
the bored Russians, " here's our program. 

" (i) Suspension of hostilities. 

" (2) No renewal of war except with 3 days' 
warning. 

" (3 No transference of troops from the Eastern 
front. 

" (4) The space between the trenches to be neu- 
tral territory. In the neutral territory fraterniza- 
tion to be allowed, but no wine to be sold or drunk 
and no penetration of enemy trenches under pain of 
being made prisoner." 

After much study and shaking of heads the Ger- 
mans said they must have time to think the matter 
over. 

" Very well," said the Russians, " but while you're 
thinking why not call all the belligerents to make 
peace? You say you are and always have been ready 
to make peace. Well then, state your terms and call 
on the world to join." 

But the Germans, confused and embarrassed, 
hurried away. Before they left, Kameneff, the 
chief of the Russian delegation, fired a parting shot. 
He didn't put his finger to his nose, but he did the 
same thing In words. This Is what he said, looking 
straight over the heads of the Germans: 

" All our proceedings are to be open. In giving 
out our reports we wish the mass of the German 
people to comprehend that we have not come to 
Brest Litosk to confine ourselves to an accord with 
German generals, but to demand of the German 
worker over the generals' heads that they join their 
voice with ours to engage the people In a fight for 
peace." 



The Germans in Petrograd loi 

Meanwhile In Petrograd, Lenine and Trotsky 
were getting out the following manifesto for distribu- 
tion in the German trenches : 

" Brothers and soldiers, we invite you to help us 
fight for peace and Socialism, because only Socialism 
will insure to the proletariat a solid peace and heal 
the wounds caused by the war. 

" German brothers and soldiers, the great example 
of your leader Liebknecht, the fight which you carry 
on in meetings and in the press, and above all the 
revolt in your navy is a guaranty that the fight for 
peace among the working class is ripe. 

" Brothers, if you will hold, peace is assured at 
least on the European Continent. All the other 
powers will join In a just and democratic peace. If 
you will help, we can establish Socialism in Russia, 
which for us to do alone is extremely difficult. Your 
capacity for organization, your experience, will give 
us the necessary means to bring about Socialism. 
Our soldiers will not advance one step if you will 
take the flag of peace in your hands. — Long live 
peace. — Long live International Social Revolution." 

But alas! Neither this appeal nor Kameneff's 
words reached the German people. The Kaiser 
took good care of that. The German people knew 
only that their government was making peace with 
Russia and they were content. 

In the Reichstag Count Hertling was saying: 

" We Germans follow with greatest sympathy the 
tragic events in Russia. Germany hopes for the re- 
turn of normal conditions there and dreams of the 
reestablishment of the ancient neighborly friendship, 
especially in economic relations," and then he added, 
" The Russian proposals for an armistice seem pos- 
sible, the looked-for peace ought soon to be an ac- 
complished fact." 



I02 Behind the Battle Lines 

About this time a big meeting was held in the 
Alexander Theater in Petrograd which has an audi- 
torium as large as the Metropolitan Opera House. 
It was a meeting of the clans. The members of the 
All Russian Soviet, the representatives of the Peas- 
ants' Congress and delegates from the factory work- 
ers, soldiers and Red Guard were present. The 
place was packed. A pass was necessary to enter. 
I had only the statement from the American Em- 
bassy that I was an accredited correspondent. That 
document had an impressive red seal. I waved this 
pleadingly before a soldier. He let forth a flood of 
Russian and barred the way. But my inability to un- 
derstand and my patience finally won him. He beck- 
oned and I followed. He led the way down pas- 
sages and through many doors. He was trailing his 
gun while I followed meekly in the rear. In a few 
moments I discovered we were in the rear of the 
theater, behind the scenes. The soldier said some- 
thing in Russian and moved on. In another second 
we were out upon the stage. The curtain was up, 
the place was jammed, the speakers were already 
upon the platform. But this didn't trouble the sol- 
dier. Straight across the stage he went, right in 
front of Commissare, Trotsky, Mile. Spiradonova, 
Madame Kolontia, and the other speakers, and I 
trailed along behind. Each moment I expected to 
hear jeers from the gallery. But the Russian is used 
to eccentricities and informalities. No one paid the 
slightest heed to us. When we were safely across 
the platform the soldier deposited me in the front 
row of the orchestra where the correspondents were 
assembled and I settled down to watch proceedings. 
It was like a state convention, a presidential cam- 
paign, and a Fourth of July rolled Into one. The 
audience buzzed with talk. These people knew what 



The Germans in Petrograd 103 

they were after. They were tremendously in ear- 
nest, Intent, alive. When Trotsky spoke he was in- 
terrupted by questions and comment. This is what 
he said in part about the peace negotiations: 

" We cannot but regret that events do not proceed 
as rapidly as we desire. But the same causes which 
brought about a revolution in Russia will cause upris- 
ings in the other countries sooner or later. Cer- 
tainly our situation would be better if the people all 
over Europe would rise and if we could talk, not 
with General Hoffman and Count Czernin, but with 
Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemberg, and 
other German Socialists. That we cannot do so 
is not our fault, and I wish to declare that we have 
talked to the German officials as one talks to enemies 
and that we have not only not lost hope, but are more 
convinced than ever that the peace negotiations will 
become a powerful weapon in the hands of the Ger- 
man people to fight for peace. Our voice will pene- 
trate to the heart of the working masses, and we 
will obtain conditions that will make a durable peace. 
But if we are mistaken, if our call is answered only 
by cold silence, if propositions are made to us which 
are detrimental to the revolution, if the Kaiser finds 
the means of marching against us, then I do not know 
whether we have the strength to fight, but I think we 
have, for we will let the old tired out men return 
home and we will send out a cry of alarm. We 
will say that our honor is at stake, and we will raise 
a strong army of young soldiers and red guards who 
will fight to the last drop of blood. We certainly 
haven't overthrown the Czar and the bourgeoisie 
at home to kneel before the German Kaiser and im- 
plore for peace. But if because of economic condi- 
tions we are not able to carry on the war and must 
renounce our fight for the ideal, we will say to our 



104 Behind the Battle Lines 

foreign comrades that the battle for our ideals Is not 
finished, It Is merely suspended, as In 19 15 when 
the battle against the Czar was not won, but was 
merely put off." 

This speech brought hot debate. The meeting 
was unlike any other I had attended. There wasn't 
the thrill and surge of the masses. These were har- 
assed, determined men struggling with a gigantic 
problem. 

Before the meeting adjourned a resolution was 
passed by the entire assembly. Copies of the resolu- 
tion were to be distributed alike among the Central 
Powers and the Allies. This was It, In part: 

" This meeting addresses itself to you German 
workers, you who are equally against the German 
Imperialistic acts of brigandage, as against the con- 
quests of an imperialistic Russia. You must help 
us. The eyes of all are turned towards this struggle 
of Russia for a just and equitable peace. Will you 
fight to die on the Yser rather than the Vistule? In 
the cities, in the villages, In the factories and the 
trenches you must engage in an active battle for 
peace, and prevent the Imperialists from miscarrying 
the peace parleys. 

" All alone the representatives of the workers of 
Russia cannot bring about a general peace. You 
must demand that your representatives, the repre- 
sentatives of the workers, take part. But that Is not 
enough. You must not be content with a peace 
which will reaffirm ancient Injustices and forge new 
chains and make the weight of war fall on the shoul- 
ders of the workers. We wish a people's peace, a 
democratic peace, an equitable peace. 

" Not only Russia but all countries must send to the 
peace conference, not capitalists and militaristic rep- 
resentatives, but representatives of the masses. The 



The Germans in Petrograd 105 

reunion of all the representatives of all the Russian 
workers, peasants and soldiers calls to you workers 
of all lands, to battle for a general armistice and a 
general peace, a peace without annexations or in- 
demnities, and with the right of self-determination 
for all people. 

" Long live the international revolution of the 
workers, peasants and soldiers." 

Such a manifesto was worse than a deluge of 
bombs to Germany. The German officials received 
it smiling blandly but they never let it reach their peo- 
ple. They offered eagerly enough to distribute it in 
the land of the Allies. But the time was not yet ripe 
for the German Government to show the cloven hoof 
to Russia. They wanted their delegates to reach 
Petrograd. So they continued their outward friend- 
ship. But each day they grew more worried. The 
fraternization at the front was not at all to their 
liking. The germ of revolution was spreading. 
German officers threatened to shoot their men if 
they talked to the Russians. Picked Germans were 
sent out to meet the Russians; young officers and pan- 
Germans who could not be corrupted. 

Finally the day come for the arrival of the Ger- 
man delegation in Petrograd. The first delegation 
of sixty members with Count Kaiserling at its head 
was to deal with the exchange of war prisoners, and 
to discuss the military and naval details of an armis- 
tice. They were to be merely an adjunct of the com- 
mission at Brest Litosk. The delegation was lodged 
at the Hotel Bristol. Straight away trouble began. 
The Hotel Bristol was an apartment hotel. Meals 
had to be taken at the Astoria, a hotel which had 
been requisitioned by the Bolshevik Government. 
The Germans didn't like the arrangement. They 
began to order the servants about. The hotel em- 



io6 Behind the Battle Lines 

ployees were petit-bourgeoisie. They did not rebel. 
They received the scoldings of the Germans with 
trembling knees. They were completely terrorized. 
The chief of the expedition, Count Kaiserling, was 
a close friend of Von Tirpitz. Moreover he had 
relatives in Petrograd whom he promptly sent for. 
As a representative of the German Government 
he had lived for four years in Petrograd before the 
war. He had been presented to Nicholas II. He 
had assisted at an interview between the Czar and 
the Kaiser. It was at the personal request of the 
Kaiser that he had come to Russia. 

But the Bolshevik Government had a surprise for 
the Germans. They had made out plans for the del- 
egation according to German method. Each hour 
was arranged for, where they should go, whom 
they should see, what they should eat. Soldiers were 
stationed at the hotel and the delegation rigorously 
supervised. This was too much for the Germans. 
To escape from Germany only to be Germanized was 
more than they could bear. They uttered violent 
protests. They raised such an uproar that in the 
end the Bolsheviki gave in. 

On the day of Count Kaiserllng's arrival he was 
interviewed and said: 

" We were told on our journey that it was danger- 
ous to go to Petrograd, that there was famine here, 
but that has not prevented our coming because the 
German Government deemed it necessary that I my- 
self, who have lived four years in Petrograd, should 
give an account of conditions here." 

He was then asked about the causes of war and 
the prospect of revolution in Germany, and burst 
out: 

" The Germans were forced to take up the glove 
which England threw down. All talk of a revolu- 



The Germans in Vetrograd 107 

tion In Germany Is a He. There Is no thought of 
revolution. Germany Is outside of politics. She 
abides by military regulations. I admit there Is a 
weariness of war, and that the people struggle for 
peace as they have done from the beginning of the 
war. But we will only accept a favorable peace. 
We are strong. Our submarines can handle the 
American fleet. We do not fear America. As to 
the conditions In Russia we have decided not to mix 
In Internal affairs. We do not know much about the 
Bolshevlkl." 

" But don't you know," he was asked, " that the 
Bolshevlkl represent only one party In Russia and 
that there are others? " 

" That," said Count Kalserling, " does not con- 
cern me. It Is a question of Internal politics. We 
are only concerned with peace." 

"But aren't you afraid?" he was asked, "that 
Bolshevism will break through the German frontier 
and add to the discontent that already exists In Ger- 
many : 

" Why," said Count Kalserling with Irony, " do 
you think Bolshevism presents a danger for us that 
It will not first spread to the countries of the Allies, 
to France and England? How little Russia knows 
about what Is happening In Germany! " 

" But you cannot deny," it was urged, " that Russia 
is the country nearest to Germany and that already 
the revolution has not been without Its effect on the 
masses. You cannot deny there has been trouble 
with the navy." 

" It Is true," said the Count with a bored gesture, 
" that there has been trouble on certain boats, but it 
was quickly suppressed. The guilty ones have al- 
ready been punished. Your insinuations In general 
about Germany are wholly untrue. With us, all goes 



io8 Behind the Battle Lines 

for the best. We enjoy full constitutional liberty. 
For lack of liberty England is the most abominable 
of all nations. Even the United States may well 
envy us." 

It seemed useless to question the self-satisfied 
Count further. But he was asked if he had met 
Trotsky. 

" No," he said, " I have not had that pleasure. I 
have tried several times to obtain an audience. I 
desire to grasp him warmly by the hand, but up to 
the present I have not had a reply to my request." 

The commissaries paid scant heed to the German 
delegation. The day of their arrival Zalkind, the 
Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, called at the 
Hotel Bristol to inquire after the health of the dele- 
gation. 

When Count Kaiserling heard of this he immedi- 
ately considered it an official call and set out promptly 
to return it. 

When he arrived at Zalkind's office he explained 
the nature of his visit. Wheron the Assistant Min- 
ister cried out: — 

" Excuse me. Count, those are ancient customs and 
traditions. We represent the new democracy. We 
do not recognize any ceremonial." 

Five minutes later the discomfited Count found 
himself in the hall. This was only one of many 
surprises the Germans experienced. At times It was 
difl^cult for them to keep their temper. One mem- 
ber remarked: "The conditions we endure are 
those which would be imposed if Germany were a 
defeated nation." To which the Soviet, when it 
heard the remark, replied: " We are strong not by 
the force of the bayonet, but because of our revolu- 
tionary enthusiasm." 

The Bolshevik oflicials were a great disappoint- 



The Germans in Petrograd 109 

ment to the Germans. Count Kaiserling after an 
introduction to Dybenko, the Minister of Marines, a 
sturdy, rough sailor with no education, exclaimed: 
" Is it possible that this is the Minister of Marines? 
He cannot speak two words. He is perhaps a brave 
man, but for a minister he is altogether impossible. 
It is the strength of the plebeian. It cannot be." 

Similar remarks were made of the others. Only 
Trotsky was considered a man of affairs. Lenine 
they had not met. 

A few days later, the second delegation of Ger- 
mans and Austrians arrived. It consisted of forty 
members who had come to arrange the economic 
relations between Russia and Germany. Count Mir- 
bach was the head of the commission. This delega- 
tion was also to lodge at the Hotel Bristol. But 
Count Mirbach would not hear of it. " I must have 
my comfort," he blustered. " To live In a hotel 
without a restaurant is impossible." After lengthy 
discussion it was agreed to accommodate the delega- 
tions at the Hotel Angleterre and the Grand Hotel. 
These hotels had the best food in town. They were 
full of French and English. Some Frenchmen were 
asked to give up their rooms to the Germans. This 
they refused to do, so the Government requisitioned 
the rooms. Enraged, the entire body of French and 
English in both hotels left as a protest. The day 
the commission arrived the streets were packed. 
Germans had become as much a curiosity as animals 
in a zoo. All the entrances to the hotels were 
guarded. When Count Mirbach saw this he was 
very angry. He immediately telephoned to Trot- 
sky and asked that the guard be withdrawn. The 
Count was given two rooms. Thirty automobiles 
were placed at the disposal of the commission. The 
second delegation, like the first, was famihar with 



1 10 Behind the Battle Lines 

Petrograd. Many of its members had lived in Rus- 
sia as heads of industrial enterprises. 

Shortly after arrival a conference was held at 
which both delegations were present. Count Mir- 
bach presided. He opened the proceedings with a 
flattering eulogy of Russia. He spoke of the hu- 
manity and generosity of the Russian peace terms 
and said it made a new era. But the gush didn't go 
down with the Russians. A fiery revolutionist was 
promptly on his feet demanding, " What about Ger- 
man humanity? Why are you arresting Socialists? " 
For a moment the Count was unnerved. Then his 
arrogance came to the rescue. With a superior air 
he said stiffly: "We cannot deal with civil affairs 
here. Our business is confined to technicalities. 
Besides, the arrests alluded to are probably rumors." 
It was a lively session. The hottest debate centered 
about the right of the delegation to freedom of 
action. The Russians rubbed it in that they were 
treated like prisoners at Brest Litosk. But the Bol- 
shevik Government, unlike the German, had nothing 
to conceal from its people. It agreed to give the 
commission liberty on condition that its members did 
not enter into private business enterprises. 

One day I went to the Grand Hotel for lunch. I 
was curious to see the Germans. The leaders of the 
delegations were not in the main dining-room, but the 
secretaries and under attaches sat at a long table. 
They were lean and hungry looking. There wasn't 
a fat German among them. There were no protrud- 
ing stomachs. They wore frock coats and were stiff 
and serious. They were like wooden images beside 
the tempestuous, passionate, vigorous Russian. 
There was chicken and rice for lunch, with a thick, 
rich sauce. I remembered the scanty and greaseless 
boiled food of Germany in 191 6. The Germans 



The Germans in Petrograd 1 1 1 

also remembered it. They did everything but hck 
their plates. They couldn't get enough. They kept 
ordering more. Once some official came into the 
room and the men at the long table rose stiffly, heels 
together and hand to head. It was so unlike the 
Russians, who lolled in chairs, cigarette in mouth, 
called each other Tavarish (comrade) and spoke 
with passion. 

The Sunday after the arrival of the delegates, a 
peace parade was ordered. It was a demonstration 
of the power of the Bolsheviki. The Soviet asked 
the populace to turn out. As early as ten o'clock 
the streets swarmed with people. When I reached 
the Nevsky, which Is twice as broad as Fifth Ave- 
nue, a solid mass of people reaching from curb to 
curb were pouring through it. Once caught in the 
crowd, it was impossible to get out. I was swept 
along with the surging mass. They were all work- 
ing people, women with shawls over their heads and 
men in shabby clothes. There were many companies 
of soldiers, sailors, and even Cossacks. Not less 
than sixty or seventy thousand were in line. Some- 
times this mass joined hands and sang, sometimes 
they talked. They were never still. They breathed 
emotion, passion, rebellion. They were like a great 
on-rushing river. To stop them was like trying to 
stop Niagara. It could not be done. If some were 
hewn down or pushed aside, the stream would still 
flow on. These were some of the inscriptions on 
the banners borne in the processions: "Long live 
the Revolution of the Workers." " Down with in- 
ternational Imperialism." " Long live a general 
democratic peace." " Long live the power of the 
Soviet." " Fight without mercy against the Sabo- 
teurs." " Down with the conciliators." " Long 
live the liberty and fraternity of the Russian people." 



112 Behind the Battle Lines 

" The Constituent Assembly must recognize the 
power of the Soviets." " The Cadets are enemies 
of the people." " The enemies of the people must 
not have a place in the Constituent Assembly." 
" Malediction to all people who sabotage the Revo- 
lution." " Long live the union fraternal of workers, 
peasants, sailors, soldiers and Cossacks." 

The German delegation had been taken to rooms 
on the Nevsky Prospect. From the windows they 
could look down on this surging mob. There must 
have been panic in their hearts. It was what the 
People's Commissaries had counted on. They 
wanted the Germans to see the strength of the peo- 
ple. It had its effect, but an effect far from helpful. 
The Germans were more determined than ever to 
prevent the spread of revolution. That glimpse 
from the window had revealed what an uprising in 
Germany would mean. The delegation saw them- 
selves mercilessly shot down. Orders immediately 
went forth to keep all Russian news from Germany. 
In violation of their agreement fraternization at the 
front was stopped and the Russian soldiers were 
given cognac and vodka in exchange for bread. 
Everything was done to spread disorder and drunk- 
enness. German propaganda flooded the land. 
Russian soldiers were told to hurry home, that the 
land was being distributed and they wouldn't get 
their share. But the Soviets worked steadily on. 
They made desperate efforts to get the revolutionary 
news into Germany. Printing presses were set up 
at any odd spot. Soldiers lugged tons of literature 
on their backs to the front. It was dropped by aero- 
plane into the trenches. 

The Russian Soviet began to get out a daily paper 
in German. It was called Die Fakel. It was a 
passionate appeal to " Our brother German Social- 



The Germans in Petrograd 113 

ists to join in the Revolution." Such talk was fatal 
to Germany. It must be stopped at all costs. A 
great wagon load of Die Fakel was seized at the 
front by the Germans, and the wagon and papers 
burned. This enraged the Russians. There was an 
indignation meeting at Smolney Institute. But the 
peace negotiations were going forward favorably at 
Brest Litosk. The Russians did not wish to impede 
them. 

The peace negotiations at Brest Litosk had opened 
with all the pomp and formality the Germans could 
command. Prince Leopold of Bavaria had opened 
the proceedings. The Turkish Ambassador made 
an address of welcome in which he said, " I salute the 
Russian delegates who had the courage in the face 
of the whole world to talk of peace in the interests of 
humanity," 

Next it was Von Kuhlmann who was saying sweet 
nothings. He remarked, " It is a great honor for 
the country which I represent to meet with the Rus- 
sian delegates and put an end to war. The confer- 
ence will work out in smallest detail the basis and 
conditions on which pacific and friendly relations can 
be renewed, particularly in the cultural and economic 
life, and will deliberate on the best way to heal the 
wounds of war. Our conference will be full of the 
spirit of humanity and mutual esteem. But to be on 
firm ground we must consider the events of history, 
as well as the new principles which we are here to 
discuss." 

Even this opening speech had its little back fling. 
That allusion to the " events of history " boded ill. 
There was an arriere pensee to all the Germans said. 
They were trying to get everything and give nothing. 
When it was seen that the Allies would not join in 
the negotiations, and that the Ukraine and Finland 



114 Behind the Battle Lines 

had split from Russia, the Germans grew haughty 
and superior. Still they continued to negotiate. It 
was imperative they have peace with Russia. They 
wanted to send their soldiers to the western front. 
But the Russian delegates saw what they were after. 
Said Kameneff : 

" I can say frankly that to arrive at a separate 
peace the German generals are willing to malce large 
concessions. But that is not what we have in mind. 
We went to Brest Litosk with the conviction that our 
words would pass over the heads of the German 
Generals to the people; that our words would enable 
the people to take the guns from the Generals, by 
means of which they are now being led around by 
the nose." 

But the hope of a revolution in Germany daily 
grew less. The German press abounded in stories 
of the chaos in Russia. Russia was said to be fall- 
ing to pieces from riots and bloodshed, that no man's 
life was safe. 

Along with this picture of a broken Russia went 
the tale of the secret treaties. The secret treaties 
were published broadcast. It was pointed out that 
the Allies had aggressive designs, that England 
meant to take Persia, France possessions in Asia 
Minor, and Italy towns of Austria. The German 
Government used this evidence to intimidate their 
people. Said the press: 

" Beware of revolution; if there is revolution in 
Germany the country will become like Russia, a prey 
to the whole world. The Allies will seize upon the 
Fatherland and divide the spoils." 

Fear entered into the hearts of the people. 
Strikes died down. Once more the Germans rallied 
to their flag. When the officials saw this they 
breathed again. They took new life. They grew 



The Germans in Petrograd 115 

domineering. They began to flirt with Finland, 
Courland, and the Ukraine, and bring them under 
the German sway. The Ukraine Rada, after hav- 
ing taken large sums of money from France, sold out 
to Germany. Only the Russian workers, the Bol- 
sheviki in the Ukraine, fought desperately against 
the intruders. In Finland and Courland it was the 
same. The whole upper stratum of society in both 
countries was German. They held out welcoming 
hands to the conquerors. When the Russian Soviet 
realized what had happened, they were enraged. 
They expressed themselves in no gentle terms. But 
the Germans only smiled sweetly and said: 

" We are not annexing territory. We are merely 
giving the people of Finland and the Ukraine aid; as 
to Courland, Poland and Lithuania, they want us to 
govern them. They have called and we have an- 
swered." 

When events reached this stage a great indigna- 
tion meeting was held at Smolney Institute. I went 
to the meeting. The excitement was tremendous. 
Kameneff had come back from Brest Litosk to make 
his report. In conclusion he said: " Our discussion 
rests on Poland, Courland, and Lithuania. Shall 
they be given the right of self-government without 
intervention of German bayonets. They must be. 
We will not give in on this point. We will have 
peace, but I repeat it is not at the moment to be found 
in the pocket of any of us. Be firm and have faith 
in our cause; in time that will bring peace, but when, 
no one can say." 

That night affairs looked black for the Germans. 
The members of the Soviet were stirred to a frenzy. 
Through the dense tobacco smoke men kept spring- 
ing to their feet and hurling oaths at the Germans. 
The majority of the Assembly wanted to arm and 



ii6 Behind the Battle Lines 

fight. A volunteer army of men, fighting for free- 
dom, should go out and annihilate the despots. But 
then came reports on the state of the Russian army. 
In some places there were no shoes, in others no 
food. Everywhere transportation had broken down. 
The Assembly grew desperate. Men faced each 
other grimly. Finally one man sprang to his feet 
and suggested that at least the German delegation 
could be given a lesson. Those men were in their 
power. Why not proceed to their hotel and take 
the delegates out, one by one and cut their throats 
and drop them into the canal? This suggestion 
caused no horror. It was even applauded. A little 
more and the Assembly would have acted on it. For 
a moment the fate of the German delegation hung 
by a thread. It is small wonder that Count Mirbach 
has since been murdered. The only wonder is that 
the deed was not done before. 

Hourly the tension between Germany and Russia 
grew greater. But the Russians bdieved themselves 
helpless. They had no army, no equipment, no 
longer a front. They signed the German peace pro- 
posals. If the Bolsheviki fail, it will be because they 
made this fatal mistake. Representatives of great 
ideals can never compromise. The seriousness of 
what they were doing they knew well. Said 
Trotsky : 

" History will say we dealt with capitalists while 
our comrades in Germany, the independent socialists, 
were arrested. Our only moral excuse is that we 
are arresting the capitalists in this country. We 
showed the German bourgeoisie their fellow Russian 
bourgeoisie in prison, but they made no protest. If 
we treat with German bourgeoisie it is as strikers 
deal with their employer. We act as though this 
were the final peace parley, but the time will come 



The Germans in Petrograd 117 

when we will talk to Liebknecht at the head of a revo- 
lutionary Germany. I am sure if the Russian bour- 
geoisie were in power they would make a shameful 
peace with Germany in order to strengthen their 
power at home. But we are stronger really than 
any other country, because the soldiers are with the 
government." 

So do all politicians argue. Evil is done that 
good may come. But an idealist cannot so reason. 
He must die for his cause, even as Christ was cruci- 
fied. 

This compromise with Germany, the suppression 
of the press, the arrest of moderate socialists, and 
like intolerant acts were causing dissension among the 
Bolsheviki. It was making a break that may prove 
fatal to revolutionary Russia. Said one Russian in 
answer to Trotsky's speech: " Cure yourself. You 
denounce the arrest of German socialists, but we hear 
to-day that Chernov, once a representative of this 
Soviet, has been arrested. Such acts provoke greater 
indignation than the arrest of Liebknecht." At this 
point the speaker was silenced. He was yelled down 
by cries of fury. But he had laid bare a weak spot. 
The idealist must preach ideals with clean hands. 
Nor would a failure to sign the peace terms have left 
Russia any worse off. Germany could have done 
little more than she has done. She might have 
marched to Petrograd and taken possession, but be- 
yond that she could not have gone. Russia and Si- 
beria together are as big as all Europe and the 
United States. To conquer such a territory Ger- 
many would have had to move all her troops from 
the western front. She could handle the west or 
she could handle the east, but she could not handle 
both together. If a small army of Germans had 
attempted to invade Russia, they would merely have 



ii8 Behind the Battle Lines 

had their throats cut and been dropped into the 
canal. Had the Russians had the faith to refuse to 
sign undemocratic peace terms, the war might have 
been over to-day. But however much we may regret 
this faihire of the Bolsheviki to hold to their ideal, 
it is not for us to judge. Let us turn our eyes to the 
future. Let us recognize the power of the Russian 
workers. If they were not strong, Germany would 
not have treated with them. That Germany recog- 
nized the Soviets meant that in January, 191 8, the 
mass of the people were behind the Soviets. 

Whatever we think about the Bolsheviki, whether 
we believe them all good or all bad, we must let 
them work out their own salvation. We have ex- 
pressed our faith in a new creed. We believe in 
self-government. We believe in it even for convicts. 
Surely then we ought to believe in it for the Bol- 
sheviki. Little by little Russia will right itself. 
Given freedom and a chance to breathe and she will 
stabilize and grow strong. Beside a strong, free 
Russia, imperialistic Germany cannot stand. It is 
not Germany that will conquer Russia, it is Russia 
that will revolutionize Germany. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WOMEN OF RUSSIA THE WOMAN COMRADE 

TO study the woman's movement in the midst of 
a revolution was difficult, particularly difficult 
in Russia, where there is no feminist group. 
For Russian women do not stand out as women. 
They have not struggled for their own emancipation. 
Their fight has been the man's fight, their life the 
man's life. They have endured years of exile in 
Siberia. They have fought for the revolution. 
They are good comrades. It is here the woman's 
strength lies. Her own needs and the child's have 
been subordinated. The home, the child, the school, 
the vote, social welfare, to these things — except in 
Individual cases — she has not devoted herself. She 
is not a good housewife. There is no regularity in 
the home. Meals are never on time. It is difficult 
to discover when a Russian family doesn't eat. I 
visited one family at eleven, at two, at four, at six, at 
eight, and they were always at the table. If they 
weren't eating, they were drinking tea. Over the 
steaming samovar the men and women discussed the 
affairs of the universe. In the country as in the city 
woman is man's mate. The peasant woman works 
in the fields. The farmer views her work with re- 
spect. The Russian woman is a man in petticoats. 
She hasn't given her life to personal service and 
social welfare, but to man's fight for political free- 
up 



120 Behind the Battle Lines 

dom. This life with man has made her frank and 
natural. She is quick to understand and full of en- 
ergy. Her endurance is marvelous. 

Early in November, 19 17, the workingmen and 
soldiers, the Bolsheviki, captured the government. 
But this did not change the position of women. 
They were as much in evidence as ever. The streets 
were packed with soldiers and with women with 
shawls over their heads. Even the wealthy women 
wore shawls and aprons, to hide their identity. 
Petrograd became a city of working people. There 
were no private sleighs or Parisian costumes, and the 
few automobiles were used by the workingmen of 
the Bolshevik government. The women trudged 
through the snow. They asked no favors. They 
jumped on and off street-cars while they were in 
motion. They fought for a foothold on a car step 
and clutched a soldier's arm to keep from falling. 
They were good-humored and unafraid. 

It was they who kept the city going. In blinding 
snowstorms they shoveled snow off the car tracks and 
tended the switches. The thermometer was twenty 
degrees below zero, it was light only from nine to 
three, but in the biting cold and stinging storm the 
women worked hour after hour. They were indom- 
itable. 

When a feminist movement does arise, nothing can 
stop such women. What they can do has been shown 
on one or two occasions. In the first days of the 
Revolution, when Kerensky and the Provisional Gov- 
ernment were in power, the question of woman suf- 
frage arose. Did the program of the government 
include votes for women? The Constituent Assem- 
bly was to be elected on the basis of universal suf- 
frage. Did that mean women? The Russian 
women believed it did. It never entered their minds 



The TV omen of Russia 121 

that men might betray them; they were men's com- 
rades and equals. But when the question was asked, 
the men were silent. A terrible doubt crept into the 
women's hearts. It was not to be borne. All over 
Russia there was a spontaneous uprising. The All 
Russian League of Women's Enfranchisement, which 
corresponds to our American suffrage organization 
of which Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt is president, 
Vv'as swamped. Women poured into the offices night 
and day. Meetings were held, and a great manifes- 
tation was organized. In March, 19 17, 40,000 
women marched to the Tauride Palace where the 
Provisional Government sat. At the head of the 
procession rode women on horseback. They kept 
the way clear and acted as police. Behind them on 
foot was the great women's army. In their midst, 
in an automobile, rode Vera Figner, a woman who 
had spent twenty years in Siberian exile. The spec- 
tators went wild with enthusiasm. They threw 
flowers at Vera Figner and urged the women on. 

At the palace a delegation entered to interview the 
president and vice-president of the Council of Work- 
ingmen and Soldiers' Deputies. These gentlemen 
said they must confer with their committees. They 
talked and argued long, but the women outside the 
palace never moved. At last the vice-president ap- 
peared and said, " For your just demand we will 
struggle." But this did not satisfy the women. 
They demanded that the president of the Council 
address them. Again there was a long wait. Still 
the women did not move. Their patience was ex- 
traordinary. The manifestation had begun at 10 
A. M. It was now late afternoon. Pools of water 
stood in the street. The women were wet and hun- 
gry, but they would not disperse. At length the 
president appeared. Then Mrs. Shishkina Yavein, 



122 Behind the Battle Lines 

the president of the Woman Suffrage League, made 
a speech which ended with these words: 

" Women have been the faithful comrades of men 
in their gigantic struggle for Russian freedom. 
Women have gone to prison and marched to the 
gallows. The best of us, like Vera Figner, have 
looked into the eyes of death without fear. We are 
convinced of our right to equality in the new, free 
Russia, for the creation of which we have given our 
all. You have said the Constituent Assembly shall 
be convoked on the basis of universal suffrage. We 
hope and believe this means women as well as men, 
but the experience of our western sisters has shown 
that men have used the word ' universal ' as applying 
only to one-half of the population, themselves, and 
have classed women with criminals, idiots, and chil- 
dren. Therefore we have come on behalf of the 
Russian women to demand that the word ' universal ' 
shall be interpreted to include women, and that the 
Constituent Assembly shall be elected by the will of 
the whole people and not by half of it. We will 
not leave this place until we have received the an- 
swer that women as well as men shall have the right 
to vote in the Constituent Assembly." 

The president of the Council of Workingmen and 
Soldiers saw that he was beaten, and capitulated. 
He assured the women that he was with them and 
advised that a delegation be sent to Prince Lvoff, the 
then president of the Council of Ministers. This 
was done, and still the patient crowd in the street 
waited. But victory came in the end. Prince Lvoff 
formally declared that universal suffrage meant 
women as well as men. 

On March 19, 19 17, political freedom was granted 
Russian women, but as soon as the battle was won, 
Russian women flowed back into the general life. 



The Women of Russia 123 

They did not stay together as women; they merged 
their entity with that of the men. When the Bol- 
shevik Revolution came, some women were for it and 
some against it. The cleavage was that of the men. 
The wealthy women, the intellectuals, the bourgeoi- 
sie, sided with Kerensky and the Provisional Govern- 
ment; the peasant women and factory workers were 
with the Bolsheviki. 

When I reached Petrograd it was a city of peas- 
ants and workers. Even the intellectuals were in 
hiding. Catherine Breshkovskaya, " The Little 
Grandmother of the Revolution," who had spent so 
many years in exile, was not to be found. It was 
said she feared imprisonment. The women who 
came to the Bolshevik meetings were peasants and 
factory workers. They were straight, slender crea- 
tures with short hair, boyish manners, and burn- 
ing eyes. They rarely rose to speak. They were 
at ease with the men, but they let them be spokes- 
men. 

Only one government position was given to a 
woman — Madam Kollontai was made Minister of 
Social Welfare. She is the first woman minister the 
world has had. 

I interviewed her one day. There is nothing radi- 
cal in her appearance. She Is slender, with light 
hair and blue eyes, a cross between a school teacher 
and an English woman of birth. Yet she has spent 
nine years In exile and for twenty years has been a 
revolutionist. We were soon In hot debate. 

" Why," I asked her, " when women have the 
same rights as men, are so few coming to the front? " 

She paused before answering and then said: 
" Women are shy. They don't yet want public posi- 
tions." 

" Perhaps," I suggested, " there aren't so many 



124 Behind the Battle Lines 

Bolshevik women as men. Perhaps women are 
more conservative." 

Quick as a flash came her reply: " No, that isn't 
true. Women who earn their living are as radical 
as men. It's only the women who stay at home, the 
mothers, v/ho are conservative." 

" And what work are you doing? " I asked. 

She frowned and sighed, and then said: " Very 
little yet. I'm having great difficulty. The clerks 
in my department are employees of the old regime. 
They won't recognize me. 1 can't make them obey. 
I want to open up children's institutions and look 
after the orphans, but it will take time." 

" Why," I asked, " do you believe in a dictator- 
ship of the working people? You didn't believe in a 
dictatorship of the Czar? " 

She flushed and then said quickly: " I don't be- 
liev'e in a dictatorship; I believe in a representative 
government. I want the Constituent Assembly 
called. But meantime the Bolsheviki have to be dic- 
tators. Really, you know," she added earnestly, 
" the people are much more violent than the leaders. 
The people are angry; you cannot hold them in 
check." 

After my interview with Madam Kollontai I tried 
to get in touch with Marie Spiradonova, the other 
Bolshevik woman who stands out in great promi- 
nence. She is adored by the peasants. She is a 
tiny slip of a person probably not more than five feet 
tall. She wears her hair in a braid bound tightly 
about her head. She is pale, with great circles under 
her eyes. Under the Czar she was horribly abused. 
She was a revolutionist and killed the Lieutenant- 
Governor of a province, who was flogging and bru- 
tally ill-treating the peasants. For this she was im- 



The Women of Russia 125 

prisoned for years and finally exiled to Siberia for 
life. During her imprisonment she was abused by 
the keepers. Her body was beaten with sticks and 
burned with the soldiers' lighted cigarettes. To-day 
she is hardly more than a wraith, but her power over 
the peasants is enormous. As she stands before 
them on the platform at their great meetings, she 
can stir the sturdy peasant to a frenzy of passion 
with a sweep of her hand, or quiet him as though he 
were a child. 

I met Spiradonova at Smolney Institute and 
stopped her for a talk. I asked her the same ques- 
tions I had asked Madam Kollontai. 

" Women," said she, " are as great idealists as 
men. The reason more Bolshevik women aren't 
prominent is because they haven't the strength or the 
training and they aren't practical. But it will come 
one day; there will be no difference between men anci 
women." 

The Russian woman has courage. It makes no 
difference in what grade of life she may be. 
Whether a peasant or a countess, a factory worker 
or an intellectual, she is a fighter. 

I met a very wealthy woman who had been a Red 
Cross nurse. In the early days of the war many of 
the women of means became nurses. To be a Red 
Cross nurse in Russia is a dangerous business. Un- 
like other countries, the Russians often put their hos- 
pitals directly at the front. This woman had lived 
in a dugout. Many of the nurses lived in dugouts. 
Daily they were exposed to death. One day a shell 
struck the dugout in which this woman and eight 
other nurses were. Seven were instantly killed. 
This woman was bitter against the Bolsheviki. She 
felt her country was going to ruin. 

A wealthy woman who was caught in the Bolshe- 



126 Behind the Battle Lines 

vik machine was the Countess Panin. It was 
through her inspiration that Noradny Dome was 
built, an amusement resort for the people. The en- 
trance fee in January, 191 8, was half a rouble, about 
twelve. cents, the cost of admission to the theater and 
opera-house comparatively small. While a place of 
amusement, it is also a place of education. The best 
that Russia has to give the people, the plays of Tol- 
stoi and Gorky, are acted in the theater. During 
the days of Kerensky and the Provisional Govern- 
ment the Countess Panin was made an assistant min- 
ister in the government relief work. While in office 
she raised 92,000 roubles for her work. When the 
Bolsheviki came into power the Countess was de- 
posed and the money demanded. But the Countess 
refused to surrender the money. She said she held 
it in trust for the people and that the Bolsheviki 
didn't represent the people. One day soldiers ap- 
peared at the Countess's house. She was arrested 
and led to the grim old fortress of Peter and Paul. 

While I was in Petrograd the Countess Panin was 
tried. In the Nicholai Palace, before a solemn row 
of workingmen, appeared the Countess, delicate, gen- 
tle, modest, but unafraid. The judge who sat in the 
middle acted as president and opened the proceed- 
ings. 

The Countess Panin was charged with sabotage. 
In retaining the ninety-two thousand roubles she was 
accused of impeding the work of the Bolshevik gov- 
ernment. The Countess denied her guilt. Her 
lawyer in defending her said: " As judges, the Tri- 
bunal must be impartial. Forget party differences 
and the class struggle. Say to yourselves it is not 
the Countess Panin who appears before us, but Citi- 
zen Panin, who has consecrated her life to the serv- 
ice of the people. Judge her according to your con- 



The Women of Russia 127 

science, and remember you have before you a woman 
who has given her all to the people." When the 
lawyer ceased speaking an old man among the spec- 
tators staggered to his feet. He uttered a despair- 
ing cry: " I can bear no more, I can bear no more. 
How can one judge such a woman? " Then he fell 
fainting to the floor and was borne from the room. 
He proved to be the old director of Noradny Dome, 
the People's House founded by the Countess. 

It was some minutes before the court-room settled 
down. When order was restored a workingman 
from a munitions factory arose. " Comrades," he 
said, " I come not to defend the Countess Panin, 
whom I do not know, but the benefactress known to 
all Petrograd, to all Russia, to all Europe. There 
are many countesses and duchesses, but only one has 
held out her hand to the people. She has gone 
among the workers without disgust at the smoke and 
dirt; she has brought to the workers instruction. 
The workers' children find in her a mother. The 
Countess is not a traitor to the people; she is not a 
counter-revolutionary. I pray you judge her as a 
citizen. The eyes of the world are upon you. It 
must not be said the Revolutionary Tribunal is a 
wild beast which hurls itself upon its first victim. 
We shall be criminals if in the person of the Countess 
we take revenge on the class to which she belongs." 

There was a mad burst of applause. But instantly 
another workman sprang to his feet. His words 
came hot and fast: " Beloved comrades, the people 
must sweep aside all that blocks their way. Do not 
let yourself be moved by the generosity of the Coun- 
tess, but judge her as she deserves. Much has been 
said of her generosity, but bandits can be generous. 
Do not let hysterical cries trouble you when the fu- 



128 Behind the Battle Lines 

ture of the working class Is at stake. Judge the 
Countess as one who by her acts wishes to make the 
people rise against the new government. Countess, 
what have you done with the ninety-two thousand 
roubles? " 

The Countess had grown white; her lips were 
pressed together, but when the man sat down, she 
arose : " I think it is the soldiers who will best un- 
derstand me. Like a sentinel I cannot abandon with- 
out proper authorization what was given me to de- 
fend. I cannot abandon the money of the people. 
It was the people who placed me in the ministry of 
public welfare, and it is to the people I will give back 
the money. I will render it to the Constituent As- 
sembly on the first day that that body meets, but not 
to the Bolshevik Government." 

Still white and trembling, the Countess sat down. 
Then the judges withdrew. They were absent a 
long time. When they returned, the president arose 
and pronounced sentence: " We sentence," he said, 
" the Countess to the Fortress of Peter and Paul 
until she delivers over the ninety-two thousand 
roubles to the Bolshevik Government." 

Such was the fate of the Countess. But feeling 
ran high about her imprisonment. Before I left 
Petrograd she had been released on bail on condition 
that she deliver the ninety-two thousand roubles to 
the Constituent Assembly the first day it met. 

Whatever Russia's future, in it women will play 
a big part. Under the old regime they had little 
chance to express themselves. They gave them- 
selves wholly to the fight for the revolution. They 
accepted man's methods. They forsook the things 
nearest their hearts, and when the Bolshevik Revo- 
lution came, the working women flung themselves into 



The PFomen of Russia 129 

it. Again they accepted man's methods. But what 
was needed was the woman's spirit; the mother half 
of the race preaching tolerance and love. 

Had that element been powerful the Bolsheviki 
might not have gone on the roclcs. The mothers 
would have been in the forefront of the working 
class movement clamoring for the child of the future. 
They would have fought against imprisonment, bru- 
tality, suppression of the press, and all the old evils 
of capitalism. 

Undemocratic peace terms would not have been 
signed if the chief purpose of men and women alike 
had been to make a decent world for the child to 
come. And if the man insisted that these things 
could only come through force, then was the time for 
the woman to show that only force based on love has 
value. When the man said for this we must fight, 
let the woman whisper, yes, for this you must give 
your life, but you must not take. For beauty is 
founded on beauty and right upon right, and real 
democracy springs from a free and enlightened peo- 
ple and is not achieved by dictatorship. 



CHAPTER X 

SWEDISH WOMEN THE GENIUS 

HOW to get out of Russia, that was the ques- 
tion. My passport had to be vised by the 
Bolsheviki and the British military author- 
ities. It was like mixing oil and water. Who to 
go to first? I decided on the Bolsheviki. My ca- 
reer as an Amerikanski Bolshevik Tavarish (an 
American Bolshevik Comrade) was satisfactory. 
The long line of vise seekers was pushed aside. My 
passport was quickly stamped, but then, oh, then! I 
asked to carry out papers. " Certainly," said the 
amiable Bolshevik Foreign Office. " We'll make 
you a Russian courier. You can take what you like." 
I tried to smile appreciation, but my heart sank. 
What would the British say? I hurried around to 
their office. " Of course," I said, " I won't be a 
courier if you don't want me to. But," I added, 
smiling, " it's only as far as Sweden and between 
there and England you can search me as much as you 
like." 

He was a friendly English captain and he saw my 
point. " I suppose," he said, smiling, " if you 
weren't the courier some real Russian Bolshevik 
would be, and of the two you're probably the least 
harmful." So I tucked my package of papers cov- 
ered with many red seals into my bag and made 
ready. 

It had taken a whole week to get the vises. Be- 
sides the British and the Russian, I had to go to the 

130 



Swedish Women — The Genius 131 

American, French, Swedish and Norwegian em- 
bassies. It meant waiting hours In dingy rooms 
among struggHng and desperate people. Often I 
felt I should have preferred the front line trenches. 
Each year the regulations grow worse. A corre- 
spondent's life is particularly pitiful. He is always 
suspected. It has become a religion to suspect cor- 
respondents, so I take pride in my passport. Each 
vise Indicates good conduct or clever strategy. 

The train for Sweden left at 8 :40 A. M. There 
are no short cuts from Russia these days. One 
couldn't go to Helsingfors and thence by boat to 
Stockholm. Instead, one had to go to the northern- 
most corner of Finland, cross a river and then down 
the length of Sweden. It was a journey which took 
five days and nights from Petrograd. 

I left in a driving snowstorm. At 8 140 A. M. it was 
still black night. At such an hour it was like hunt- 
ing for a needle in a haystack to find a sleigh, but at 
last I secured one. I was thankful I had no trunk, 
only two bags and a carryall. The sleigh was open. 
I was beaten and buffeted by the storm. The snow 
drifted down my neck and up my sleeves. At home 
we would never have ventured out in such a gale. 
It would have been called a blizzard. The ther- 
mometer was 20 degrees below zero, but in war time 
one cannot bother about trifles. Conditions must be 
accepted and you either live or die. The train was 
two hours late in starting. A snowplow went ahead 
to clear the track. Two hours after we left we were 
out of Russia and in Finland. At once I began to 
notice a difference. Things began to be orderly. A 
dining car was put on. The food was scanty but 
well served. I felt of the white tablecloth and nap- 
kins with exquisite pleasure. It was so long since I 
had seen clean linen. The Bolsheviki do not need 



132 Behind the Battle Lines 

capitalistic luxury. But the waiter troubled me. 
He was servile and hung around for tips. I pre- 
ferred the self-respecting Bolshevik brand. But we 
didn't keep our dining car long. Even in countries 
where there is neither a revolution nor a war, rail- 
road travel is slipping back to the discomforts of the 
Middle Ages. 

At night we stopped at a railroad station for din- 
ner. We were allowed fifteen minutes. At these 
eating places the food is put on a long table. You 
buy a ticket and help yourself. That is, you help 
yourself If you can. The men on the train rushed 
the dining-room. They were as thick as flies. You 
saw no table, only backs and legs. It was tantaliz- 
ing. There was no slipping a head or arm in any- 
where. At every meal throughout the journey it 
was the same. I should have died of starvation be- 
fore I reached Stockholm If It hadn't been for a 
young American Y. M. C. A. man. He must have 
been a football player before he joined the Y. M. 
C. A. He was six feet tall and had a mighty muscle. 
Brute force and tips won. He and I always got 
food. The next day we were many hours late. 
We arrived at eating stations at ungodly hours, ten, 
four, and six. Outside, the storm still raged. We 
reached the end of Finland late at night, too late to 
cross to Sweden. Our train pulled up on a siding 
and there It stayed. That night there were no 
sheets, but we were given a blanket. I had become 
hardened to sleeping in my clothes. I needed them 
for warmth. I rolled up tight in the blanket. 

In the morning we were still on the siding. By 
nine It was light. At ten the hungry men were fum- 
ing for their breakfast, but we were in the middle of 
snowbanks. An engine house was the only visible 
building. The thermometer stood at 40 degrees be- 



Swedish Women — The Genius 133 

low zero. But the Y. M. C. A. man appeared, radi- 
ant and smiling. " I have a plan. Come along. 
We'll get breakfast." He tried to open the train 
door, but it was locked. We were prisoners until we 
reached the station and our passport had been exam- 
ined. But my companion was dauntless. He made 
for the last car. The door to the rear platform 
was open. We climbed up over the rail and jumped 
into the snow. Then we ran to the engine house. 
Inside we found the engineer. Several kroners pro- 
duced the desired effect. He oiled up and the Y. M. 
C. A. man helped me on to the engine. I sat beside 
the engine driver and he pulled the whistle. With a 
puff-puff we moved out of the building. It was a joy- 
ous but chilly mile ride to the station. We bumped 
into a freight car on the way and took it along. We 
had a great breakfast and three cups of coffee, the 
first coffee in many a day. We were very superior 
when the other passengers arrived. 

All morning we wrestled with the Finnish author- 
ities. When we had been examined and passed, we 
collected our luggage and got a sleigh. Torneo, 
Finland, is, I imagine, like some town in Alaska. It 
consists of a vast stretch of snow, a few wooden 
buildings and a church. The Finnish sleighs are like 
beds. There is no seat except for the driver. The 
bed part is covered with straw. On this you lie, 
three in a row, covered by a great fur rug. It is the 
only way to keep from freezing. By this time the 
temperature was 50 degrees below zero. As we 
sped along I peered out from the fur rug. My eye- 
brows were instantly white with frost. We were 
crossing the frozen river which separates Finland 
from Sweden. There was nothing to see but a flat 
white world. 

At the Swedish border we filed into a long wooden 



134 Behind the Battle Lines 

building. Here we encountered a surprise. In 
Russia and the Anglo-Saxon countries you are exam- 
ined for dangerous literature. But Sweden is chiefly 
concerned with the body. She is like Germany. 
We were shown into a speckless room with an oper- 
ating table and a doctor and nurse in white. After 
a hunt for germs we were passed on. Modern sci- 
ence in a snow wilderness seemed queer. System 
and order had descended upon us. But in Sweden, 
like Germany, if the orders get mixed things go 
wrong. 

Our berth reservations were for the preceding 
night. The Finnish train had missed connections. 
We found we were berthless. Tips and the Y. M. 
C. A. man got me a place, but the majority of the 
passengers had to sit up for three days and two 
nights. Among our number was an English family 
fleeing from Russia, a young mother with three 
children under six. They had no nurse. Their 
Russian nurse had been a Bolshevik and refused to 
accompany them. Besides this family there was a 
middle-aged French woman, frightfully ill. She 
wished to die in her native land. The journey 
brought on horrible paroxysms of pain. All the 
afternoon and evening we waited for trains. We 
were crowded together in a dingy waiting-room. 
The time was spent ministering to the sick woman 
or consoling a child who had fallen from a bench. 
There is a law in Sweden that the car temperature 
must be 60 before the train is allowed to start. But 
fuel these days is scarce. The wood was green. 
The heat would not increase. The train was sched- 
uled to leave at 7 P. M. It was one before we were 
permitted to get on board. The wooden benches in 
the waiting-room had grown unbearable. The sick 
woman moaned with pain. I dropped into my berth 



Swedish Women — The Genius 135 

exhausted. The Swedish train was beautifully 
equipped. It was as perfect as any Pullman. Gone 
were the days of Russian fleas and dirt. But at six 
in the morning we were awakened by great excite- 
ment. The sick woman was dying. A doctor was 
demanded. This woman was in the car next to mine. 
In the night the steam pipes in that car burst. For 
hours the passengers had been without any heat. 
We were all ordered to get up. The thermometer 
in our car was only 40, but we were ordered to take 
in the passengers of the other car. There weren't 
enough seats to go round. Most of the day I stood 
in the swaying aisle of the train. That night the 
heat in our car gave out. Before we reached Stock- 
holm the heating system of every car, including the 
baggage car, had broken down from the cold. We 
had to take on a whole new set of cars. The con- 
stant delays made the food problem difficult. We 
arrived at stations at the wrong hours. One night 
we had dinner at six and then nothing to eat until 
three the next day. But everything comes to an end. 
On the fifth day at one in the morning we reached 
Stockholm. When we stepped out of the station we 
were in the middle of the beautiful city. It lay there 
rigid and still under the shining stars. There was 
not a sound nor a human being visible. Gone are 
the days of taxis and sleighs. Horses and petrol 
have given out. The tram cars had stopped for the 
night. Finally a hotel porter appeared with a hand 
sled. He piled our bags upon it and we trudged off 
in the hard, glistening snow. Stockholm is crowded 
these days with refugees from Russia and Germany. 
It was hard to get rooms. But ten of us found ac- 
commodations at the Strand Hotel. 

The next morning when I woke It was some mo- 



136 Behind the Battle Lines 

ments before I realized where I was. Then I lay 
and exulted. The bed was so soft; the sheets 
smelled so sweet; the room was so clean. It was 
marvelous to have a telephone that worked; an elec- 
tric light that turned on; a bell that brought a smiling 
maid in white cap and apron. I felt like ragged Cin- 
derella turned into a princess. No longer should I 
have to sleep in my clothes; go without baths; be 
covered with fleas, and hear rifle shots and machine 
guns in the street below. Turbulent Russia was a 
thing of the past. 

I had my breakfast in bed. For twenty-four 
hours I reveled in peace, beauty, and order. Then 
I began to look beneath the surface. On the street 
life was so still. Every one dressed alike. The 
men wore frock coats and high silk hats. They 
were pompous and funny, like wooden Images. 
Their faces were set or smiled blandly. What was 
the matter? Weren't they alive? Had passion 
died out? I grew hungry for the dirty Bolshevikl. 
They could think and talk. They were not made in 
a mold. I missed the crowd; the passionate street 
corner arguments; the pulsating life. Was there no 
happy medium? Couldn't one be clean and orderly 
and yet alive? Mightn't physical things be system- 
atized but the human soul left free? One day I sent 
off a cable. The telegraph girl shook her head 
over it. " Is this a ^ or an If" she said severely, 
handing the message back. I saw that In crossing my 
/ I had inadvertently crossed the /. The word was 
battle. There could be no doubt about the /. I 
meekly said so. " Don't you know," she continued 
severely, " that you oughtn't to cross your I? " I 
nearly cussed. Russian messlness suddenly seemed 
heav^enly. 

Average life In Sweden has become mechanical. 



Swedish Pfomen — The Genius 137 

It is tainted with Germanism. The tentacles of 
organization are strangling the fight for free- 
dom. 

The opening of the Riksdag or Parliament oc- 
curred while I was in Stockholm. It was held in the 
Palace and the King made a speech. Through the 
courtesy of the American Embassy I was given a card 
of admission. When I arrived at the Palace two or 
three hundred people stood in the snow waiting for 
the great gate to open. The crowd was visibly ex- 
cited. They were going to see the King. Again I 
had the feeling I was living in a dream. In Japan, 
where one is a rebel and a radical if one is a member 
of the Y. W. C. A., I felt myself back in the Middle 
Ages. In Russia, where Maxim Gorky was consid- 
ered a conservative, I had leaped to the twenty-first 
century. Now in Sweden I was back to the days 
before the French Revolution, and about to see a king 
on his throne. No wonder the world is at war. 
You can't run monarchies and democracies side by 
side any more than the stage coach can compete with 
the express train. The old must give place to the 
new. 

When the Palace gate opened there was a rush for 
seats, but the seats were few. Most of us stood at 
the end of the long hall opposite the ermine-covered 
throne. I noticed the people I was with. They 
were old retainers, servants, clerks, the boot-lickers 
of the aristocracy. The galleries were filled with 
the elite. The front rows of the balcony, either side 
near the throne, were reserved for the embassies. 

After a wait of an hour the members of both 
houses of Parliament filed in. They occupied seats 
on either side of the long hall. The embassy parties 
had already arrived. It was eleven o'clock in the 
morning, but the ladies wore evening dress and the 



138 Behind the Battle Lines 

gentlemen dress suits. Then there was a flare of 
trumpets and the royal family appeared in their box. 
The Queen wore a very low-necked black velvet eve- 
ning dress, a diamond necklace and diamond head- 
dress. After the royal party was seated there was 
another flare of trumpets and a lot of generals and 
courtiers arranged themselves around the throne. 
Then there came a burst of music, and the King's 
bodyguard followed by the King marched in. The 
soldiers formed two long lines down the hall. I 
could look straight between them to the King. They 
were dressed in chamois skin and wore great shining 
coats of mail and helmets. They looked exactly as 
though they had stepped out of the British Museum. 
They drew their swords with a great flourish from 
their scabbards and held them solemnly below their 
faces. 

The King stood on the platform before the throne 
and bowed. Then he sat down and every one rose 
and the King read his paper. 

I had come too recently from Russia. The change 
was too great. I couldn't take the proceedings seri- 
ously. I began to chuckle inside. I wanted to walk 
down that row of soldiers and bang away on their 
old tin armor. I longed to snatch the ermine mantle 
from the throne and upset the kingly dignity. I had 
an insane desire to say, " Run along, old man. Hop 
down from the throne. Your days and the Kaiser's 
are over." 

The ceremony didn't last long. In an hour we 
were out in the street. What is it that makes coun- 
tries so different? Each great city has broad streets 
and fine buildings. In externals there is little to 
choose. The difference lies in something subtler; in 
the spirit behind. Japan, Germany, and Sweden are 
monarchies. They are run for the benefit of the 



Swedish Women — The Genius 139 

aristocracy. They are militaristic and mechanical. 
System and obedience are placed higher than indi- 
viduality. They produce spotless towns but stupid 
people. On the other hand, Russia, Norway, Den- 
mark, England, France, and America, in spite of a 
few superfluous kings, are democracies. Individuality 
means more than comfort and order. In Russia I 
knew not a word of the language, yet through ges- 
tures and smiles I could go anywhere and get any- 
thing. In Sweden it was hopeless. It took a page, 
written in the Swedish language, to get to a building 
around the corner. The war has been a tragedy for 
Sweden. Much of her physical luxury has had to 
go. Fuel and food are scarce. In the hotels only 
one electric light is allowed in a room, and the tem- 
perature kept at 60. With the food it is even worse. 
Sweden has reached the stage of Germany in 19 16. 
There is little fat or food that has substance. Two 
hours after eating I was hungry. Yet Sweden still 
clings to luxuries. It was possible to buy at exorbi- 
tant prices poor pastry, cream for your coffee, and a 
tiny bit of candy. There was no butter; the supply 
of bread was low, and all the necessities rationed. 
The rich were thriving at the expense of the poor. 
The great palace tells the story. It dominates the 
city. It stands on one of the great canals facing the 
Grand Hotel. At its feet lies the splendid city, the 
opera house, the banks, and the great business build- 
ings. Behind the palace, tucked away beneath its 
skirts, are the dark and ugly streets of the poor. 
The tenements are close together, and the alleys 
narrow. Light rarely penetrates to the lower floors. 
In winter it is dark at three. From then on through 
the long night the poor remain in utter darkness. 
The fuel has to be used for heat, not light. But 
beyond, the palace lights blazed. There was the 



140 Behind the Battle Lines 

sound of music and laughter and people went about 
clad in velvet. 

Such a state of things cannot last. Slowly under- 
neath the mass moves and stirs. The women were 
among the first to rebel. Long before the war they 
denounced the materialism of Sweden. A strong 
feminist movement grew up. It was different from 
those of England and America. The Anglo-Saxon 
women have concentrated on political freedom — 
" votes for women." In Sweden and Germany the 
feminist movement has centered on the " protection 
of motherhood," or " Miitterschutz." Both move- 
ments are important, but one deals with women as 
human beings, the other with women as sex beings. 
In Sweden the need for sex freedom was great. The 
Swedish women, like the German, were treated as 
house fraus. They were owned first by their fa- 
thers and then by their husbands. Their lot was 
intolerable. There was no hope for political free- 
dom. The country was not a democracy, so the 
women ignored the vote and concentrated on sex 
problems. With Ellen Key as inspirer and leader, 
they struggled to reform the marriage laws, the di- 
vorce laws and the laws relating to illegitimate chil- 
dren. Ellen Key originated the " Miitterschutz " 
idea. She demanded that the ascetic conscience give 
place to the eugenic conscience. She held that the 
child was of prime importance, that the child must 
be born of the mother's desire, that there must be 
volitional breeding, not accidental breeding. " Thou 
shall not propagate, but elevate the race." She 
stood out for a new morality. She declared that 
chastity consisted in harmony between the soul and 
the senses. A marriage without love was immoral. 
She said that the conscience union of George Eliot 




ELLEN KEY 



Swedish Women — The Genius 141 

and George Henry Lewes, which lasted for twenty 
years until Lewes' death, was as moral as the legal 
marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Brown- 
ing. 

But such doctrines are revolutionary. They are 
not declared with impunity. The men and the gov- 
ernment grew angry. Ellen Key was called the se- 
ducer and corrupter of youth. She was harried and 
bullied, but she fought on. Her fine personal life 
and her doctor's degree helped her. The women 
rallied to her standard. In the end she triumphed 
To-day the government bows before her. As a mark 
of appreciation it gave her a beautiful stretch of land 
on a great lake in the center of Sweden where she 
lives. But the laws that have been passed, the free- 
dom that has come, are the greatest testimonials to 
Ellen Key. 

To-day ( I ) young women receive the same edu- 
cation as young men. Universities and schools are 
open to both sexes. 

To-day (2) divorce may be had by mutual consent 
a year after the demand. 

To-day (3) the illegitimate child has a father. 
The paternity is sought and the child given the fa- 
ther's name. The illegitimate child inherits from 
both father and mother and must be supported by 
the parents according to their means. Further, the 
father must support the mother during her confine- 
ment and the nursing period. 

To-day (4) there is a state maternity insurance 
for the wage-earning mother. For two weeks be- 
fore and six weeks after confinement the mother is 
cared for. But here the reforms end. They do 
not extend to the woman who works at home. The 
legally married non-wage earning mother is badly off. 



142 Behind the Battle Lines 

She Is still hardly more than the husband's property. 
When the war came Germany extended the mater- 
nity insurance to the soldier's wife. This was the 
reason it gave — to relieve the soldier's mind. Not 
to relieve the mother in the agony of childbirth, with 
her husband at the front, but — to relieve the sol- 
dier's mind. This callousness, to be found in the 
Swede as well as the German, made the Swedish 
women turn to one another. From each other they 
drew love and inspiration. They are bound together 
by an indissoluble bond. When I went to Sweden I 
wondered why the Swedish women were so promi- 
nent. Of the half-dozen world famous women, two 
come from Sweden, Ellen Key and Selma Lagerlof. 
Sweden hasn't national woman suffrage and the coun- 
try is not a democracy. Why then has it produced 
the woman genius? In a short time I had the an- 
swer. It is because the women were forced to rely 
on themselves. Driven in a corner by the men, they 
have turned to one another. They have concen- 
trated on women's problems. They have done their 
own thinking, worked out their own solutions. 
They haven't copied men, they have expressed them- 
selves. No man could have written the books of 
Ellen Key or Selma Lagerlof. They are the 
woman's gift, the result of her belief in herself and 
her problems. Anglo-Saxon women too often try to 
copy men. They think freedom consists in the right 
to think and act like the man, but the thoughts and 
acts of man may not express the woman. The es- 
sential thing is the power to think and act for one- 
self. The woman genius arises only when this is the 
case. 

Because women have copied men instead of ex- 
pressing themselves Is one of the reasons why there 
are so few great women writers and artists. I rev- 



Swedish Women — The Genius 143 

eled in the Swedish women. I wasn't a stranger. I 
was one of the great sisterhood. I felt the love that 
comes from the kinship of motherhood. 

To tell of the individual women is difficult. I met 
so many who are doing original work. There is 
Elin Wagner, a novelist of many novels who began 
her career as a reporter. And there is Eva Anden, 
a woman lawyer, who handles the cases of women 
and children. She studied in the university, although 
any one can be a lawyer in Sweden; it requires no 
training, only pluck. A two years' practice in court 
plus an examination qualifies one to be a judge, but 
no woman of course will ever be judge until there is 
universal woman suffrage. 

Then there is Anna Lenah Elgstrom, a young 
mother who has just written a book called " Moth- 
ers." This is the letter Anna Elgstrom wrote when 
she sent me her book: 

" We women are revolting against state mechan- 
ism, against an age of materialism, which is dragging 
down the individual soul, robbing it of reverence for 
life, deflecting it from the purpose of life, purity, 
love, knowledge. I have tried to give voice to the 
pains of motherhood, a motherhood which recog- 
nizes these purposes, which venerates life. 

" War is not the only destructive force. The age 
is material. Life is turned into a struggle for money. 
It is a game, a pleasure. It becomes mechanical and 
this breeds war. Women are to blame as well as 
men. We ought to possess enough mother conscien- 
tiousness, mother responsibility, to rise up and stop 
this life of materialism and mechanical organization. 
I am not hopeful that this can come quickly. I am 
not sure we have entered on the last war. I believe 
in evolution and evolution comes slowly. But it will 



144 Behind the Battle Lines 

come in time. I believe in the future. I believe in 
the women of the future. It did me good to meet 
you, to meet the women the world around who are 
awake. Your presence made me feel the kinship and 
sisterhood of all women." 

Before I left Sweden I felt I must see and clasp 
the hand of Ellen Key, the founder of the great 
" Miitterschutz " movement. I wanted also to talk 
to Selma Lagerlof, but the two women live at op- 
posite ends of Sweden. I could make but the one 
trip. I decided it should be to Ellen Key. Ellen 
Key is the preacher and teacher, Selma Lagerlof the 
artist. Selma Lagerlof is not a fighter. She has 
not struggled for reform, but she believes in the 
" Miitterschutz " program and in suffrage. She 
writes from this standpoint. Her work is fiction. 
She makes her contribution to the woman's cause 
through the imagination. In 19 14 she was elected 
to the Swedish Academy, the first and only woman 
to receive such honor. Her books have been trans- 
lated in many languages. Reluctantly I gave up see- 
ing her, but I turned my face southward to Ellen 
Key. I had to change trains three times to reach 
Strand, Alvastra. It is a half day's journey from 
Stockholm. I arrived at seven in the evening. It 
had been dark many hours. When I left the train 
there was only a small boy on the platform. I 
couldn't speak Swedish and the trainman and the 
small boy couldn't speak English. By gestures I 
made the small boy understand I was hungry. I 
gave him my bag and we trudged off in the deep 
snow. It was a tiny village with a few wooden 
houses and a church. We turned in at a farmhouse 
and a friendly woman with a lantern greeted us. 
Soon I was drinking hot coffee and eating sand- 



Swedish Women — The Genius 145 

wiches. I had learned one Swedish sentence. This 
I began to repeat over and over: 

" Kan Damen talar Enghska? " (" Can any one 
speak English? ") 

Evidently no one could. After earnest consulta- 
tion there was a great shaking of heads. Then I 
tried again. " Ellen Key," I said, and repeated the 
name over and over. Light dawned in the small 
boy's face. In a few minutes a horse and sleigh were 
at the door. There was but one seat, so I climbed 
up beside the driver. The sleighing was good. We 
dashed along a well traveled country road, but after 
a couple of miles we veered off across a field. The 
horse floundered in snow up to his middle. Many 
times we nearly upset. It was very cold. I had 
wrapped a blanket tight around my head and shoul- 
ders. It was a beautiful night. The stars shone 
brightly. The horse pulled the sleigh through the 
deep snow up across the field, and suddenly a great 
lake stretched below us. It was so vast it had no 
beginning or end. The water sparkled in the star- 
light. The snow-covered fields reached to the 
water's edge. The whiteness and the radiance were 
unearthly. The lapping water, the great peace, the 
magic brightness thrilled me. 

At the top of the hill we left the sleigh. Beyond 
half-way down the hill on the other side, among ever- 
green trees, nestled a white house. I followed the 
driver. We plunged into snow over our knees. No 
path had been cleared. It was a hard pull to the 
house. When we reached the front door there was 
no light and all was still. My heart sank. But 
presently there was the sound of hurrying feet. A 
smiling, wholesome young maid greeted us. In a 
moment she had gone for Ellen Key. I waited in 
the dim hall and wondered. Then a woman, neither 



146 Behind the Battle Lines 

small nor large, with white hair and dressed in gray, 
came toward me. It was her eyes that held me. 
They were the eyes of youth, full of passionate 
eagerness. Ellen Key is sixty-seven, but you do not 
think of her age, she is so alive. Her manner is 
gentle and without self-consciousness. Her thought 
was all for me. Was I wet? Was I cold? How 
had I gotten there? Yes, she had had my telegraph 
but the operator or the hotel concierge had been so 
stupid. The telegram had come without name or 
address. She couldn't send me word, but she was 
very glad to see me. Only there was no fuel. Since 
the war it had been impossible to keep the house 
warm. There was wood enough to heat her room, 
that was all. She mustn't let me sleep in an unheated 
room. Then she turned to the driver and poured 
out a flood of instructions. I was to be taken to a 
house down the road. There they had wood. I 
was to have a fire in my room, many blankets and 
something hot to drink before I went to bed. In the 
morning early I was to come back to her. We 
could have the whole day together. I fell asleep that 
night with glad dreams of the morrow. I awoke 
with a thrill. Ellen Key greeted me at her front 
door. By daylight the youth in her eyes was even 
more apparent. Her body might grow old but her 
spirit never would. She led me to the open fire in 
the big living-room. She felt of my stockings to 
make sure they were dry. There is so much mother 
love in Ellen Key. She ought to have had a dozen 
children. Soon we were deep in talk and I was tell- 
ing of my trip around the world, and presently I felt 
Ellen Key's hand on mine and tears were in her eyes 
and welled over as she said: 

" Oh, I am so glad you're a woman who under- 
stands. I was afraid you might be the other kind 



Swedish JVomen — The Genius 147 

of American and then I should have had to say things 
that would hurt you." 

I had come to Ellen Key out of the unknown. She 
had never heard of me before, but in a few minutes 
it was as though we had known each other a thou- 
sand years. Our hearts beat for the same purposes 
and the same end. We recognized each other as 
part of the great woman's movement which we loved. 

It was a day of sheer gladness. I seemed to be 
living among the stars. Ellen Key showed me all 
her big and little treasures. The living-room was 
huge, a sitting-room and dining-room thrown in 
one. It faced on the shimmering lake. It was 
bright and spotless with the softest colors and rows 
of books. Directly overhead was Ellen Key's bed- 
room. It was as sweet and shining as a nun's sanc- 
tuary. In it v/as the small chair and desk of her 
childhood. Over the washstand with its simple 
bowl and pitcher was a reproduction of a painting 
of a naked baby, with golden curls, standing on the 
top of the world with little head thrown back and 
little arms outstretched to the sun. Under it were 
two words, " The Light." Outside the bedroom 
door in the cheery hall stood Ellen Key's big work 
desk. It was piled high with letters and pamphlets 
and books and magazines in half a dozen languages. 
In the hall downstairs Ellen Key stopped to read me 
the lettering over the front door. It said, " Remem- 
ber to live," and then she turned me about to read 
the lettering on the opposite wall. That said, " Live 
to-day." It was impossible not to live in that house. 
Each moment was packed with meaning. At lunch- 
eon the cheerful maid of the night before waited 
upon us. She is Ellen Key's sole companion. They 
are good friends rather than mistress and maid. 

" She is a very unusual person," said Ellen Key. 



148 Behind the Battle Lines 

" Last night when you had gone we talked of you 
and I asked her how old you were. This was her 
reply: ' I don't know. She had had so much spirit 
in her eyes I couldn't tell whether she was young or 
old!'" 

But the spirit in my eyes was the reflection from 
Ellen Key's. The reflection of the spirit of all the 
great women I had met. For the womanhood of the 
world is awake. It is blazing forth in unimagined 
splendor. Along with the physical struggle that en- 
gulfs us there is a great spiritual battle and in that 
spiritual battle the women lead. 

It was of this we talked, for Ellen Key believes in 
the woman warrior but not the woman soldier. She 
is against militarism and all physical violence. She 
loathes Prussian militarism and has said so. This 
has cost her her popularity in Germany. To be dis- 
liked saddens her, but she does not waver. " It is 
love, not force that will remake the world," said 
Ellen Key, and added sadly, " I fear for the hate 
that will come after the war." Then it was my turn 
to utter words of hope, and I spoke of' the greatest 
of women the world around, and suddenly Ellen Key 
rose up and put her arms around me and held 
me close and from her tortured heart came the cry, 
" Oh, little girl, you will live to see it, but I shall 
not." 

Yet who knows? Swiftly and surely the spiritual 
fight goes on. In a few short years the woman's 
position in Sweden has completely changed. Ellen 
Key's faith spreads and grows. It has extended to 
Norway. That land has outsripped its teacher. It 
has sv/allowed the " Miitterschutz " program whole. 
This was comparatively easy, for Norway had al- 
ready come in contact with the Anglo-Saxon woman's 
movement. In 1907 Norway led Europe by enfran- 



Swedish JVomen — The Genius 149 

chising its women, Norwegian women have both 
political and moral freedom. Of these things I 
spoke, of the spirit of motherhood that is permeating 
every phase of life. The light came back to Ellen 
Key's eyes. When lunch was over she raised her 
glass of crystal clear spring water. " See," she said, 
" how beautiful it is. Drink with me to the love 
that shall some day overcome force." Our glasses 
clicked. It was a rare moment, a consecration to a 
life of truth and love. 

The day came to an end. It was time to go. But 
as I climbed into the sleigh my heart sang. New 
richness had come into my life that no man could 
take from me. In Sweden there would be Ellen Key 
working and striving. In each country there were 
great women working and striving. Never again 
need one be faint of heart. As the train chugged 
along I had much time for thought. There was no 
light to read by, for there was no fuel. One solitary 
candle illumined the car. I snuggled down in my 
corner and in the flickering candlelight while the 
train rushed on through the snow-covered country I 
thought and thought. 

In Russia women had given themselves and their 
all to man's cause. They were comrades and mates. 
They had died in his fight, but they had not tried to 
express themselves. In Sweden on the contrary it 
was the other way. Women had drawn apart from 
men, they had concentrated on one another, on the 
woman's problems, on self-expression. They had 
produced the woman genius. But neither method 
was perfect. It was the combination that was 
needed. Woman must think for herself, express 
herself, live her own life, but live it shoulder to 
shoulder with man, be his comrade and mate. It 
is woman's contribution plus man's, generated by love 



150 Behind the Battle Lines 

for one another that makes the perfect whole. This 
was the ideal to work for. 

At nine o'clock I got out to change cars. The 
train that was to take me from Sweden to Norway 
was due at midnight. But 12 o'clock came and went, 
and no train. 1 sat in the little waiting-room with 
two or three men and women who snored peacefully 
In their hard chairs. The minutes rolled by. Each 
bulletin made the train later. It was 3 : 30 A. M. 
before It arrived. I tumbled into my berth, tired 
and spent. But somehow physical comforts had 
ceased to matter, I was still filled with dreams 
of the future. I seemed to see women the world 
around joining hands to meet the new day that had 
dawned. 



CHAPTER XI 

VITAL NORWAY THE WOMAN PIONEER 

I HAD reached Norway. Two-thirds of my jour- 
ney around the world was over. But the danger 
was not past. To reach En2:land I had to cross 
the North Sea. Submarines filled those waters. 
Daily the papers told of ships sunk. Germans filled 
the land. They poured into Denmark, ate up the 
food, and drifted to Norway. They bought Norwe- 
gian hotels under a Swedish name. Weary Rus- 
sians and English and Americans homeward bound 
lived at these hotels and discussed their woes. The 
bland proprietor listened and reported to the Ger- 
man Government. The Germans knew when the 
boat left for England. The English kept the date 
of sailing a secret. The passengers were in dark- 
ness. But the Germans sat on the seashore and 
watched proceedings. It was very disconcerting. 
The sense of danger and intrigue was nerve-racking. 
Norway was intolerable. The people were hungry. 
The Allies had stopped supplies, and the Germans 
had nothing to give. The friendly little land had 
grown ugly. She begrudged her visitors each mouth- 
ful of food. She charged outrageous prices for vile 
accommodations. A room in a boarding house cost 
$5.00 a night. There were few vacancies. Ger- 
mans, Russians, English, Americans occupied every 
available spot. The lack of food, the physical dis- 
comforts, the sense of spies, the necessity of waiting 

151 



152 Behind the Battle Lines 

for a boat, made Norway a prison. I hurried 
through the land. But my trip from Christiania to 
Bergen came to a halt. Fifty miles above Bergen a 
snow avalanche had crashed down the mountainside. 
Two houses with their occupants had been caught and 
crushed by the rolling snow and swept into the fjord. 
The railroad track was destroyed. Fortunately the 
train escaped injury. But it was two days before we 
could proceed. When I reached Bergen the boat 
for England had left. It would probably be a week 
before another went. I was in despair. Bergen 
dripped moisture. The land was covered with melt- 
ing snow. The streets were sheets of ice and 
streams of water. The houses were damp. They 
had the foul, cold smell of prison. It was impossible 
to get a square meal. There was no butter, no 
sugar, and little bread. Daylight lasted from eight 
to four. Bergen was as ugly in winter as it was 
enchanting in summer. For Norway is a land of 
extremes. Ice-bound in winter, it has in summer a 
long delirium of golden sunshine. 

In July the sunset lingers on the horizon at mid- 
night, and two hours later the birds announce the 
coming of the dawn. Between such extremes of 
bleak cold and dazzling sunshine the people live 
their lives. The scenery is as diversified as the 
climate. 

Christiania lies in a smiling, hilly harbor. With 
its islands, its hills, its vivid, green pine-trees and bril- 
liant blue water, it rivals in beauty the golden gate of 
San Francisco. But Christiania is unlike any Ameri- 
can city. It has the earmarks of age and Bohemia. 
It has all the charms of Paris. Sidewalk cafes 
abound. But while Christiania and Bergen present 
the graciousness of European cities, the mountain dis- 
tricts and the farms scattered along some great 



Vital Norway — The Woman Pioneer 153 

waterway are lonely, grim, and barren. Often a 
dwelling clings to a mountain like a great rock, every 
moment in danger of being hurled to the valley below. 
A steep trail cut in the rugged mountain is the only 
path, and up beyond the farm the towering summit 
is never reached. What lies on the other side of the 
snow-capped top is unknown. The people in one 
valley live in ignorance of those in the next. There 
is something almost sinister in the grandeur of such 
scenery. To the stranger it is overpowering. This 
mighty contrast in scenery and climate has had its 
effect on the nation. To pass in a day from deep, 
mysterious fjords, towering mountains, and mad, 
racing torrents to smiling, friendly Christiania leaves 
deep, clean-cut impressions. To vibrate between the 
long, warm, sunshiny summer days to the short, dark, 
cold, shut-in ones of winter produces equally intense 
and varied emotions. 

The Norwegians are people of deep passions. 
They are very different from the easy-going, stolid 
folk of the low-lying, fertile countries. Their lives 
are built of extremes. In summer passions mount 
high. Life is lived to its fullest; there is a bursting 
of pent-up desires. Through the long, bright days 
the harvest of emotions is reaped. Then comes a 
period of burial, a time of solitude when the soul 
catches up with the joys of the body. The world 
of thought and dreams unfolds. It is from such sur- 
roundings and emotions that the crude, strong, vital 
literature and art of Norway have sprung. 

It was natural that Henrik Ibsen and Bjornstjerne 
Bjornson had birth in such a land. In both these 
men there is the depth, strength, and vividness of 
Norway. They deal in fundamentals. 

The literary greatness of both these men lies in 
their intensity and sincerity. The spirit of Viking 



154 Behind the Battle Lines 

warriors flowed through their veins. The same 
spirit is visible throughout modern Norwegian art. 
The modern art galleries of Christiania are unusual. 
Nearly every painting and piece of sculpture has 
meaning. They challenge the imagination. These 
works of art have been created not for a superficial 
loveliness, but because they held inner significance. 
One of Norway's greatest modern sculptors is Gus- 
tav Vigeland, born in 1869. In all of his work it 
is the inner personality he depicts, the struggle of 
mankind toward greatness 

One of his most interesting statues is that of Ca- 
milla Collett. It was the first statue erected to a 
woman in Norway. Camilla Collett was born In 
18 13. As a girl she was very beautiful and promi- 
nent socially for her charm and her intelligence. At 
forty she had published a book anonymously, called 
" The Daughters of the Sheriff." It dealt with so- 
cial problems, and was far in advance of the thought 
of the day. It created a great sensation. It soon 
became apparent that Camilla Collett was to be the 
leader in Norway of the women's struggle for free- 
dom. The last twenty years of her life were spent 
fighting for suffrage. When she was born women 
had no political rights; they were treated like chil- 
dren. Until 1863, unmarried women were under 
tutelage; no woman could carry on any business with- 
out the advice or consent of some man. But in 
1907, twelve years after Camilla Collett's death, 
woman suffrage had become a reality. This great 
victory was in large measure due to her dauntless 
courage and persistency. 

After her death the suffragists urged Vigeland to 
depict her heroic spirit. This he consented to do, 
and In 1908 her statue was unveiled. It stands on a 
little plot of ground in the small park In front of the 






i 



Vital Norway — The Woman Pioneer 155 

royal palace. Vigeland's conception of Camilla Col- 
lett was that of an old woman buffeted and bent by 
the storm, but still fighting on. Even the railing 
around the figure is torn and twisted by the gale. 
But one wishes the head had been made erect, as 
Camilla Collett must have held hers. Otherwise 
Vigeland has created a magnificent figure of strug- 
gling womanhood. 

Another Norwegian sculptor possessing even 
greater renown than Vigeland is Sephan Sinding. 
His work Is also full of originality and freedom and 
is concerned with the struggles of humanity. The 
woman's problem has fascinated him. One of his 
most striking figures is a barbarian mother bearing 
her dead son from the field of battle. Another de- 
picts a mother with hands tied tightly behind her, 
struggling to feed the baby which lies at her feet. 
Then there is the " Zwei Menchen," the love em- 
brace of a man and woman, almost as famous In Its 
way as Rhodin's " Baiser." 

Perhaps the great strides of the woman's cause are 
largely due to Its advocacy by such master artists 
as Ibsen and Sinding. Anyway the Norwegian 
woman is in the vanguard of the movement. She 
is the pioneer. Norway was the first European 
country to grant suffrage. Woman has risen from 
a state of tutelage in the days of Camilla Collett to 
full equality with man. This equality Is many sided, 
it is physical, mental and spiritual. All through the 
country one sees women clad In knickerbockers climb- 
ing mountains with the ease of men. No war was 
needed for them to take up men's works. For some 
years Norwegian women have been chopping wood, 
building houses, holding oflRce and even smoking 
small cigars. Norway has absorbed the Miitter- 
schutz program of Sweden, and the fight for political 



156 Behind the Battle Lines 

equality of the women of England. In that brilliant, 
crude and rugged land, the very soul of mankind is 
emerging. With the courage that comes from a 
lonely and isolated life, amid towering mountains 
and mysterious fjords, the Norwegian spirit has 
stepped forth naked and vivid. But to-day its splen- 
dor is overshadowed. The tragedies of war menace 
it on every side. The land is full of spies. Norway 
grows ugly. I wanted to get away. The people 
were as dreary and cold as the bleak winter days. 
Nature and man had become sodden. One's stom- 
ach clamored for food, one's spirit clamored for 
sunshine. But it was days before the boat left for 
England. I settled down at Voss, a village two 
hours by rail from Bergen. There Englishmen re- 
turning from Russia doggedly smoked their pipes and 
waited. It was a lucky choice. I made friends with 
a Canadian doctor and an English correspondent. 
They, like myself, were desperate. They had been 
away two years. They counted the hours to home 
and England. For ten days we faced Norway to- 
gether. We discussed every subject in heaven and 
earth, and related our adventures. We never men- 
tioned the trip ahead and the submarines. But un- 
derneath lay a silent dread. One day when conver- 
sation ran low, an American fluffy ruffles turned up 
at the hotel. She was stamped all over chorus girl. 
There was no doubt about the type. She had blond 
hair, very short skirts, and many diamond rings, and 
she was exceedingly pretty. Her husband, an Eng- 
lishman, had gone to Russia leaving her to return 
to England. The English correspondent and the 
Canadian doctor immediately took new interest in 
life. 

" Look here," they said, " she's a countrywoman 
of yours. Speak to her and introduce us." 



Vital Norway — The Woman Pioneer 157 

" That's all very well," I said, laughing, " but 
where do I come in? " 

The correspondent was a true sport. " I'll tell 
you what," he said, " I'll give you a day out of my 
life to do with just as you please, if you'll introduce 
me." 

I thought a moment. " Done," I said, " I'll hold 
you to that," and up I jumped. 

Soon fluffy ruffles was sitting beside the corres- 
pondent exchanging coy glances. I chuckled. I 
knew what he was in for. I went off for a long 
walk. When I returned he was sitting disconso- 
lately in a corner. " What's the matter? " I inquired. 
" My God! " he said, " such a face and nothing in 
the upper story." He quoted a little of her conver- 
sation. I confess I blushed for America. One of 
her speeches was " I wear all these rings for con- 
venience. If a chambermaid or a servant is good to 
me, I give 'em one." 

" When I heard that," said the correspondent, " I 
thought of offering to black her boots. Perhaps 
she'd give me a diamond ring. I haven't a cent to 
get home with." 

" Anyway," I said, laughing, " I have that day out 
of your life." From then on we three spent our 
time planning out my day. " Der Tag " we called it. 

Among the people at Voss was a little Russian girl. 
She was fleeing from Russia. She had been a Red 
Cross nurse at the front. She had gotten as far as 
Norway and wanted to go on to England. But 
she wore her hair short; she smoked cigarettes and 
looked like a revolutionist. England would not 
let her pass. She was heartbroken. She didn't 
want to go back to Russia. Her grief was pitiful. 
" I know," I said to the correspondent, " what I'm 
going to do with my day. You shall marry the Rus- 



158 Behind the Battle Lines 

sian girl. They'll let her into England as your wife. 
It's the only way. For twenty-four hours I kept him 
in suspense, but I had to relent. He was so miser- 
able. It was evident he was not fitted for matrimony. 
But everything comes to an end; frivolity and danger 
alike. One day word came to pack our bags and 
hurry to the boat. In a few hours we were at Bergen 
and tucked away on shipboard. But to my sorrow 
I found I had been separated from the doctor and 
the correspondent. They were on one boat and I 
on another. Two ships were being sent over es- 
corted by two cruisers heavily armed, with guns 
pointing in every direction. I went on shore for a 
moment and met my friends. We interviewed the 
ship's agent. " You see," I said, " it's very impor- 
tant we should be together for this man (pointing to 
the correspondent) has promised me a day out of his 
life, and if we sink he'll have to save me." 

The agent laughed but such trifles are not consid- 
ered in wartime. We had to go our separate ways. 
The ships kept fairly close together. I could see the 
correspondent on the top deck. He had promised 
to stay there and fling me a rope and life preserver in 
case of need. But we neither of us were on deck 
long. The English boats are small and the North 
Sea very rough. When we got out of the fjord we 
began to toss like an eggshell. I had crossed the 
ocean without seasickness, but in a few seconds I 
was leaning over the rail. Then I staggered to my 
berth and flopped. For thirty hours, during the en- 
tire trip, I never moved. I didn't care how many 
submarines attacked us. The more the better. 
With two exceptions every one was ill. England 
ought to make money out of those trips. No one 
ate a mouthful. 

Not until we were steaming into a Scottish har- 



Vital Norway — The Woman Pioneer 159 

bor did I have strength to rise. Then I crawled 
on deck. It was nine in the evening and very dark. 
Only a few lights shone along the waterfront. But 
the smell of England came to my nostrils. The air 
was soft, the bleakness of Norway had vanished. 
The smoke from soft coal fires poured from the fun- 
nels. Something within me broke. The strain was 
over. I was safe at last. Here people spoke my 
language. In London friends were waiting for me. 
The dangers of the trip were past. Meanwhile the 
other boat slipped up beside mine. The doctor and 
the correspondent were calling to me. I would land 
first. As soon as I was examined I was to rush to 
the hotel and secure rooms. The hotel was just 
across the way. I left the examination shed and 
stepped out into the street. It was pitch black. A 
friendly policeman offered to lead me to the hotel 
entrance. At the door a flight of steps led upstairs. 
Evidently the hotel was on the second floor. That 
seemed queer, still I entered. At the head of the 
stairs was a large room. It was flooded with lamp- 
light. The long supper table in the center was 
spread. At one end of the room burned a soft coal 
fire. A weatherbcaten man with a very red face and 
nose and two maids in black dresses and white caps 
and aprons sat before the fire chatting. The maids 
also had red cheeks and noses and several of their 
front teeth were missing and they dropped their 
" h's." It was like a scene from Dickens. But I 
was too tired and hungry to think. I sat down and 
fell to. The tea, the bread and butter and jam were 
delicious. I was half starved. Food had been poor 
and scarce in Russia, worse in Sweden and utterly 
lacking in Norway. It wasn't until I had eaten a 
good meal that I began to consider the hotel. Why 
hadn't my friends turned up? Where was the rush 



i6o Behind the Battle Lines 

of travelers? I proceeded to ask questions. It was 
of course the wrong place. I was in a seamen's 
resort. Life In Russia and Norway had lowered my 
standards. I paid a shilling for my supper, picked 
up my bag, shook hands with my new friends, and 
went off. Very quickly I unearthed the doctor and 
the correspondent. They were reveling in coffee, 
cigars, and English newspapers. I didn't like the 
brilliance of the palatial hotel. I felt out of place 
in the velvet carpeted drawing-room. I suddenly 
grew conscious of my Chinese fur hat, my coat that 
had seen the wear and tear of the Revolution, and 
my felt lined black velvet Chinese shoes that kept out 
the biting cold. But my companions were in gay 
humor. Before we went to bed I planned out " der 
tag " with the correspondent. I had an inspiration. 
He was to take me to the spot In London where the 
greatest moment of his life occurred and tell me 
about it. 

In the morning we took train for London. The 
Canadian doctor now that he was on native soil grew 
assertive. " See here," he said, " why can't you let 
me look after you? Do for once be a dependent fe- 
male." 

" Why certainly," I agreed. " It's nice to be 
cared for." So he bought the tickets, made the 
plans and superintended the baggage. But alas for 
his masculine pride. When we reached London my 
bags could not be found. I had traveled through 
Japan, China, Siberia, a Russian Revolution, Sweden 
and Norway, w^ithout the loss of a penny. But be- 
tween Edinburgh and London the doctor lost every- 
thing I possessed. I wouldn't refrain from teasing. 
I suggested the male was more in need of protection 
than the female. It was three weeks before my bags 



Fital Norway — The PVoman Pioneer i6i 

were discovered. They were in different cities, in 
lost property rooms. 

But ragged and dirty as I was, possessing only the 
clothes I stood in, my friends gathered me to them. 
I felt like Ulysses after his wanderings. Nothing 
was too good for me. I reveled in the beauty and 
peace of England. My spirit as well as my body 
was healed. For England to-day is a wonder. A 
spiritual revolution has swept through the land. 
The average work-a-day man and woman are reach- 
ing new heights. Not what can / grab but what can 
/ give has become their faith. And in the forefront 
of the spiritual battle stand the women. But all 
this is another story and must be told in another 
chapter. 



CHAPTER XII 

INSPIRING FRANCE 
I. PARIS BOMBARDED 

TO reach France the channel had to be crossed. 
It was full moon, a bad time for crossing. A 
time when submarines reap their harvest. 
They see and cannot be seen. But the trip was 
short. I spent the night on deck, wrapped in a 
blanket. In the morning we were in Havre. Old 
men in blue blouses helped us disembark. The 
broad streets were lined with little sidewalk cafes. 
I was in the land of friendliness and charm. But 
the cafes and streets were deserted. Companies 
of soldiers marched past and little children and old 
men walked the streets. The train from Havre 
to Paris was packed with soldiers. I had suddenly 
been flung into the world's war. Until then I had 
seen little of war. In the countries through which 
I had traveled, except England, there had been but 
three topics of conversation, food, clothes and heat; 
how to live without freezing or starving. But here 
It was different. The battle field was a few miles 
away. Plospital trains moved back and forth. The 
newspapers had flaring headlines. Women in black 
filled the land. Yet curiously enough in this land of 
conflict the civil population throve. Physically 
France was better oft than any of the other countries. 
Paris had plenty of food. 

It was the first of March when I reached there. 

162 



Inspiring France 163 

Snowflakes still scurried through the air. The hotel 
rooms were chilly. But mid-day brought the warm 
spring sunshine. It was a strange Paris, or rather, 
a Paris of strangers. Italians, Serbians, Moroccans 
and, above all, American boys in khaki crowded 
the cafes. Life moved hot and fast. Taxis flew 
hither and thither; women packed the stores and 
soldiers occupied every sidewalk chair and smoked 
and talked. One heard every known language. At 
night as I walked home through the darkened streets 
I would hear a voice behind me saying, " Gee! how 
I'd like to see Broadway — say — wouldn't the 
lights look good? " 

In the restaurants I continually ran into one of 
our boys, struggling desperately with the menu, and 
when I brought my French to his rescue we fell into 
conversation. If he was just over he was homesick. 
He would show me a picture of sweetheart, wife or 
mother and give me messages for the folks at home. 
But Paris has a subtle charm. Few can resist it. 
Certainly the American boys do not. After a few 
weeks, loneliness vanishes. You hear a different 
story. Quite a typical case was that of a young lieu- 
tenant who sat next me at dinner: " Well ! how are 
you getting on? " I asked. " Great! say, this is the 
life. You know Ave fellows will never be the same 
after this war. The little Western town I come 
from looks pretty dull. No grinding ten hours a 
day for me. I want to travel. And say, these 
French women are corkers. I have a girl at home 
but — well — I wonder what she'll seem like when 
I get back." That the French women are charming, 
there is no doubt. They are particularly charming 
to the Americans. Their men have been taken from 
them. There are about ten French women to every 
American boy. However, the young lieutenant of- 



164 Behind the Battle Lines 

fered me candy and invited me to go automobiling. 
" It is so good," he said, " to see some one from the 
U. S., some one you can talk to." 

But American women need to face a big fact. 
The intensity of life in Europe produces a psycho- 
logical change. When you sit next to a man in a 
moving picture show while bombs drop outside, you 
are drawn together in a deep, real way. The stuff 
you are made of is laid bare. It is what you are 
that counts. Who your ancestors were and whether 
you are wearing white kid gloves is not only trivial 
but absurd. We must go deep into life if we are to 
keep pace with the men and women of Europe. 
This brings me to the hectic days in Paris when the 
whole community was swept together by the daily 
danger of air raids and bombardments. I hoped 
when I left England to escape them. But not 
so. Early in March the big drive began and the 
Germans turned their attention to Paris. Nearly 
every evening the air raid signal sounded. When I 
went to my room to dress for dinner I would say to 
the little elevator boy, " Will the Boche come this 
evening? " and he would smile gayly back and an- 
swer, " I think so, madam." Often the enemy didn't 
get across the barrage. But on moonlight nights 
between eight and nine the alerte came. It was a re- 
lief when the orgy came. At eight-forty the fire en* 
gine dashed past, blowing its shrill siren and every 
one rushed to cover. The subway trains stopped; 
the people crowded into the metro stations, and the 
street lights went out. In the hotel we hurried into 
the underground cellar. Little children were dragged 
from their beds and wrapped in blankets. The first 
night I found myself in a dim recess with six Moroc- 
cans, guests of the hotel. The gas had been put 
out to prevent explosions. The little sub-cellar 



Inspiring France 165 

room was dimly lighted by a candle. My compan- 
ions had brought their bright red floor rugs. On 
these they sat with their bare sandaled feet curled 
up under them. They were dark and swarthy, al- 
most negroes in color. They wore long flowing 
robes and great white turbans. It was so weird I 
forgot the air raid. I imagined myself a heroine 
in a melodrama, imprisoned in a cellar with six ruth- 
less Turks. Then I began to wonder what would 
happen if a bomb struck the hotel. My companions 
were nervous and excited. Somehow a sub-cellar 
with six Moroccans did not seem safe. I decided 
to risk my life on the floor above. In the front 
hallway were two or three American soldiers. It 
was their first air raid but they were very cheerful. 
We pushed open the great front door. A bomb 
crashed to earth. There was a great flash of light. 
Very loud was the steady boom, boom of the cannon. 

We hastily stepped back Into the hall, but after 
a little our courage rose again. We peered out into 
the bright moonlight sky. The French aeroplanes 
came low. They skimmed over the top of the 
houses. Then they rose and hurled forth balls of 
fire. These bright spots of light were like shooting 
comets. They darted about clearing the sky of 
enemy aircraft. 

Between eleven and twelve the fire engine again 
dashed by, this time sending forth a gay triumphant 
bugle call, the notice that all was well. Immedi- 
ately there was wild rejoicing. The world poured 
up from underground. Supper and drinks were in 
order and a paean of thanksgiving went up. 

In the morning there was a mad rush for the 
papers. But the papers never tell where a bomb has 
dropped. To find that out one must explore. 

Fortunately few bombs fall on buildings. One 



1 66 Behind the Battle Lines 

can travel the entire length of London and Paris 
and see no sign of damage. Notre Dame and West- 
minster Abbey gaze as proudly up at the skies as 
ever. Most of the bombs drop in open spaces. 
Windows are smashed but buildings remain unin- 
jured. It is factories or apartment houses in outly- 
ing districts that have suffered most. When a 
cheaply built tenement house is struck, the bomb 
crashes through to the ground. Only the people in 
the cellars are saved. 

This forced exodus to the cellars Paris treats as 
a joke. W^ith characteristic pluck and good humor 
the French dressmakers are designing models for 
underground wear; fur lined silk negligees, that can 
be slipped on at a moment's notice. Even under- 
ground moving picture shows and restaurants are 
in order. 

In such an atmosphere of thrills one is never at a 
loss for conversation. The restaurants hum with 
talk. If you have been near the scene of an ex- 
plosion and have secured a flying piece of shrapnel, 
you exhibit it and a crowd gathers. They listen 
breathlessly to your story. Life in Paris is like life 
on ship board. Introductions are dispensed with. 

But to return to the air raids. The methodical 
Germans had them timed and planned. The signal 
came regularly between eight and nine. Then some 
Boche got original. At one o'clock we were routed 
out of bed by the alerte. We could no longer sleep 
in peace. At all sorts of unexpected hours the warn- 
ing came. This got on our nerves. We grew cross 
from want of sleep. In the morning, frazzled peo- 
ple emerged, their clothes covered with white dust 
where they had leaned up against a cellar vi^all. 

Then for a couple of nights there was a lull. We 
breathed again and slept late. It was in the interim 



Inspiring France 167 

that I lunched with a French family. The lunch 
had reached the coffee stage. We were discussing 
air raids of course. The hostess had iust risen. 
When Bif — Bomb — Bang — The building shook 
and rocked — the long French windows flew in; the 
hostess screamed, the guests fled from the table. 
We had but one thought, a bomb had dropped almost 
on top of us. My host and I remained seated. We 
waited. Would another come? Finally we moved 
to the window. Down in the street the people were 
screaming and gesticulating but there was no sign of 
damage. Above, the sky was a smiling blue. No 
enemy airship sailed there. What could have hap- 
pened? W^e reassembled in the drawing-room and 
telephoned to the war ofiice. Then word came that 
a great factory had been blown up. On the way to 
my hotel, I saw countless smashed windows. The 
Avenue de TOpera was a mass of broken glass. 
That evening in the restaurant I sat next to an Amer- 
ican Y. M. C. A. man. He was looking very v/hite. 
" I went to the scene of the explosion," he said. 
" It's beyond the city limits. There wasn't a stick 
of the factory left. The building was razed to the 
ground. If it hadn't happened at the noon hour, 
thousands of lives would have been lost. The 
houses all around were destroyed." 

The day after the explosion the air raids began 
again. It was late one night before the signal came 
that all was clear. I stepped out into the deserted 
streets and walked across a bridge over the Seine. 
The stars were shining, the moon was up. The city 
lay before me peaceful and silent. The serenity 
and beauty brought inner calm. I went back to 
bed. It was past midnight. Anyway I thought 
there will be quiet until another night. But my eyes 
had hardly closed, when — bomb — bomb — bomb. 



i68 Behind the Battle Lines 

I turned over sleepily. I was frightfully annoyed. 
It was 7 A. M. But the third thud stirred me to 
consciousness. Excited chatter rose from the street 
below. Then the fire engine went tearing by. The 
Germans must be flying over Paris. I sprang from 
my bed and stepped out onto the balcony. It was a 
glorious Spring day. The birds had begun to sing. 
The sun was already warming the great boulevards. 
It couldn't be possible the enemy was flying over 
Paris in broad daylight. Then there came another 
thud. It was near. There was a crashing sound. 

The people in the street below scurried into door- 
ways, windows were slammed to and iron shutters 
rolled down. In a moment Paris had sprung back 
to her night clothes. I shut my window and 
dressed hastily and ran downstairs. Guests were 
hurrying from their rooms; women in negligees with 
hair twisted into hasty knots, and nurses carrying half 
dressed babies ran downstairs. It was a disgruntled 
crowd. They were angry rather than frightened. 
It was an outrage to be gotten out of bed before 
petit-dejeuner. The Germans were going too far. 
It was all very well to be raided at night but to be 
bombed before breakfast was unbearable. 

The cellar was damp and moldy. Moisture oozed 
from the walls. The babies began to cry. But the 
little company settled down stoically and ordered 
cafe an lait. Presently I went upstairs to the dining- 
room. Even here it was not cheerful. The iron 
shutters were down and the electric light sent out a 
feeble radiance. The thuds came regularly, with 
twenty- or thirty-minute intervals. After a little we 
ventured to the front door. The warm sunshine 
streamed in. It was a heavenly day. " Damn those 
Germans, they should not spoil it! We would en- 
joy hfe in spite of them." We stepped out onto the 



Inspiring France 169 

sidewalk. On the Avenue de I'Opera people were 
already moving back, and forth. On the street cor- 
ners little groups gathered to gaze up into the shining 
blue. Far above white specks moved. We felt they 
must be French airmen still we didn't know. All 
day with each thud we eagerly scanned the sky. We 
never dreamed a long distant gun was bombarding 
Paris. 

I had a morning engagement. By ten thirty I 
was dressed and walking up the Avenue de I'Opera. 
The stores were closed and the shutters down. 
Transportation had ceased. The metro trains were 
not running. The officials still believed an air raid 
was on. But many people were on the street. 
When a thud came we paused a moment, shivered and 
then walked on. A few taxi drivers were carrying 
on trade as usual. I finally secured a car. We 
went tooting across the Place de la Concorde, over 
the Seine, past the Chamber of Deputies to the house 
where I had my appointment. When I alighted the 
taxi driver stopped me for talk. " Aren't you afraid, 
Miss?" he asked. I shrugged my shoulders. "I 
suppose I am," I said. " But there isn't much use. 
You see, Fm an American, traveling about the 
world, and there is still the ocean to cross. C'est 
la guerre, que voulez-vous." He smiled apprecia- 
tively. Again the intensity of life had removed bar- 
riers. 

The people I had come to see were out. The 
servants had fled to the cellar, and the family taken 
refuge with neighbors in a first floor apartment. 
But after a hunt I found them. Soon the daughter 
of the family and I were walking back across the 
Seine to keep a luncheon engagement. We paused 
on the bridge and leaned over the balustrade to gaze 
at the city. The water danced and sparkled, the 



1 70 Behind the Battle Lines 

magnificent buildings stood out proudly, and beyond 
and in front of us stretched the great Tuileries 
Garden. Then Bang — the earth shook. It was a 
terrific thud. We knew the explosion was near. 
Later we learned the Tuileries Gardens had been 
struck. We shook ourselv^es and straightened up. 
It was uncanny, unreal. It couldn't be true that 
under that bright blue sky, bombs were dropping on 
that serene and lovely city. 

That night at dinner I sat next to an American 
Y. M. C. A. man. He had been close to the Tuil- 
eries Garden at the time it was struck. " I was 
standing in a doorway," he said, " and the force of 
the explosion sent me staggering back. Afterwards 
I went to see what damage had been done. There 
was a hole in the ground the size of a dining-room 
table. Fifteen feet from the explosion a soldier was 
asleep on a bench. The noise woke him, but he 
didn't get a scratch. Some dirt was thrown into the 
eyes of a baby in a baby carriage fifty yards distant, 
but not a soul was injured." 

It was marvelous how little damage the big gun 
did that first day. The toll was ten killed and a 
few injured. 

With the setting of the sun there came a respite. 
But at nine the alerte sounded. It was midnight 
before the raid was over and we went sleepily to 
bed. But with daylight came the bomb — bomb — 
bomb. But now we knew a long range gun was 
bombarding Paris. We did not fear it as we did the 
air raids. A bomb from an airship comes down 
straight. But the big gun hit sideways. 

It acted in the dark. The chance of its striking 
you was infinitesimal. The second day of the 
bombardment, Paris went about its business as 
usual. Stores were open, the trains ran, and side- 



Inspiring France 171 

walk cafes were as crowded as ever. I went to 
the Grand Hotel for breakfast. I had my coffee 
at a little table on the sidewalk, facing the Opera 
House. It was ten o'clock, people were streaming in 
and out of the metro station, soldiers moved to and 
fro and taxis flew in every direction. Then sud- 
denly there came a terrific explosion. A shot had 
landed in rue Victoire behind the Opera House. 
For an instant action ceased. The earth seemed 
paralyzed. But this was only for a second. Then 
the laughter and talk spurted out as before. Not 
by a quiver of an eyelid was Paris going to show it 
cared a cent for the big gun. 

An American officer took me to see some of the 
places hit. There was a good size hole in the 
ground in Place de la Republic; in front of the Statue 
of Liberty, the Statue which /\merica gave to France. 
The worst damage was done to a house on the 
Boulevard des Italiens. It hit the fourth story of 
a six-story building. One room was completely 
destroyed, others injured and all the glass shattered. 
The Paris papers were humorous. They took to 
giving the Germans good advice. They suggested 
a gun six times the size to do really effective work. 

On the second day of the bombardment we had 
no air raid. We enjoyed a long peaceful sleep. 
But Sunday morning the big gun began again. But 
by this time we were hardened. I went over to the 
Tuileries Garden to sit in the warm sunshine. Sev- 
eral of our American boys were playing baseball. 
Their lean, strong, young bodies assumed true pro- 
fessional baseball curves as they pitched swift 
straight balls. A little crowd of Parisians, old men, 
young girls and children, gathered. They gazed 
open mouthed and with wide-eyed admiration at our 
supple, vigorous, .energetic lads. When a ball went 



172 Behind the Battle Lines 

wide of Its mark a child would dash after it and 
bring it proudly back to the Americans. The boys 
were chewing gum and ragging one another, but they 
always paused to smile and give the French kiddie 
a reassuring pat. This American game of baseball 
was more Interesting to the spectators than the great 
gun. Perhaps the Germans realized how little com- 
motion they were creating, for on Sunday the shots 
died down. 

But it is not easy to live always In the presence 
of air raids and bombardments. The tension gets 
on one's nerves. To daily face death one needs cour- 
age and sanity. These are qualities the French 
possess. They rise above their environment. In 
spite of danger and death they keep life normal. 
The ordinary affairs of life run smoothly. Clothes 
are laundered. In Siberia, Russia, Sweden and Nor- 
way, and in Germany In 19 16, the Impression was 
that of a world running down hill. Nothing was 
kept up. For four years, houses have gone un- 
palnted, cars unrepaired, nothing has been renovated. 
The world Is slipping into the state of an abandoned 
farm. But this is not so visible In France. That 
it Isn't, Is due largely to the women, which brings 
me to a consideration of French women. 

II THE FRENCH WOMAN THE LOVER 

The French women have poured themselves into 
the business of war as the Russian women flung them- 
selves into the Revolution. They have done the 
drudgery. They are the bulwark behind. The es- 
sentials of life are performed with swiftness and 
ease. They have tilled the fields, preserved the 
food, mended and repaired, and kept charm and 
grace alive. But these physical services have 
drained women. The spiritual life has not prog- 



Inspiring France 173 

ressed. The women have not dreamed and planned 
for the future. They have not like the women of 
England built up a new order. Perhaps it was im- 
possible. The war has been in their dooryard. 
The men kept coming back to them. They have 
had to fetch and carry. Yet there is another reason. 
The French woman does not express herself. She 
is content to seize a man and work through him. 
There is no great feminist movement. In this re- 
spect France and Russia are alike. But the fem- 
inist movement is non-existent in Russia because 
women copy men. They are men in petticoats. 
They are comrades. In France, on the contrary, 
women are wholly unlike men. They are extremely 
feminine. But this femininity doesn't express itself 
outwardly. It is directed inward and flows into a 
man. Neither as comrade or lover can woman 
achieve self-expression. To do that she must be 
both and more. She must stand on her own feet 
and live and express her own life. 

Slowly the French women are awakening to this. 
They have been past masters in understanding men. 
They have made him their instrument. Their mel- 
odies have been expressed through him. But now 
this instrument is at the front. They can play but 
one tune upon it — war. All the aspirations and 
hopes for the future must be left unsaid. The sol- 
dier has no time for these, and slowly but surely the 
need for self-expression is arising. 

It is showing itself in odd unexpected ways. One 
of the surprises of Paris was the strike of the Midi- 
nettes. The Midinettes are the women workers in 
the great dressmaking establishments. The major- 
ity are young and pretty. They dress well. They 
make their own clothes. They are the pride of 
Paris. They are called Midinettes from midi (noon 



174 Behind the Battle Lines 

hour) when they throng the streets. They are not 
organized. They do not belong to trade unions. 
But since the war they have grown restless. It has 
been all work and no play. Prices have gone up and 
their wages have not. The proprietors of the big 
establishments were reaping vast fortunes. It was 
not to be borne. One day the Midinettes rose up 
and walked out. There was no plan. Some one 
started the thing and the rest followed. They 
marched the streets arm in arm. They sang naughty 
and enchanting songs. They stopped the soldiers 
on the street and embraced them. They filled Paris 
with delight. The populace cheered. The whole 
city rose to their aid. They won their strike with 
a song. In somewhat the same way suffrage will be 
won. The suffrage movement is not vigorous. 
French women do not work together. But as one 
French woman said " We will get suffrage before 
the war is over. We will win it with a smile," and 
they will. The French woman's power is enormous. 
She is alive and intelligent and little by little she 
is learning the value of sex collectivity. The work- 
ing women are trying to bring women together. 
They hold their suffrage meetings in the evenings. 
On one such occasion the following manifesto was 
issued: 

" French fVovien, Demand Your Rights. 

" If you wish to see the reign of justice, if you 
wish your children to be free and happy, 

" If you wish never again to see the horror of war 
without distinction of class or opinion, 

" Unite. 

" Only the vote will change the political situation. 
Is there a woman who does not feel the need of social 
reform? It is for France to proclaim the equality of 
the sexes and the fraternity of individuals. 



Inspiring France 175 

" French women, unite, organize and demand the 
enfranchisement of women." 

But though the women of France haven't yet or- 
ganized, do not know how to organize, as a nation 
France is singularly united. This is particularly true 
since the war. Common danger has laid low all bar- 
riers. Paris is at once the most enchanting and 
nerve wracking of cities. It is nerve wracking be- 
cause of air raids and the big guns. Yet this very 
torment is the enchantment. Every one you meet 
is your friend. You are bound together by the men- 
ace of death. Life is no longer a thing of the sur- 
face. 

A few nights after I reached Paris I went to the 
Theatre Francais. I went with Valentine Thomson, 
who edits La Fie Feminine, the one feminist maga- 
zine of France. The play was one of Anatole 
France's. At the end of the first act Valentine 
Thomson introduced me to Anatole France. He is 
a gray-haired, gray-bearded old man over seventy. 
But his eyes are still young. He suffers and lives for 
France. It was a great honor to shake his hand. 
Fie was much absorbed in his play. It is one that 
has been given before. But its truth is as great 
to-day as ever. It presents the struggle of a mother 
and daughter. The mother is a Catholic. Her 
faith is that of the past generation. She wishes her 
daughter to forsake life and become a nun. But the 
girl is young. The world is sweet. Her lips have 
touched her lover's. She is torn between longing 
for him and the wish to obey her mother. The frail 
young life breaks under the strain. She tastes of 
love and kills herself. The play personified the 
struggle between life and religion, but to me it was 
symbolic of another struggle: of the struggle be- 
tween the new generation and the old. The struggle 



176 Behind the Battle Lines 

between the woman who believes her duty extends to 
the whole world and all the children of the future, 
and the woman who finds duty limited to the four 
walls of her house. It is this struggle that rends 
French women to-day. Shall service be limited to 
one man or extend to all humanity? 

It was a momentous evening. As if to emphasize 
the struggle within, a battle raged without. In the 
middle of the second act, there were two heavy thuds. 
The Gothas were over Paris. Bombs were falling. 
The explosions were so severe the theater rocked. 
It was the worst air raid Paris had experienced. 
With the first thud there was a murmur. People 
rose all over the house. Then one of the actors 
came to the front of the stage. 

" If you are willing, we will continue with the per- 
formance. Those of you who hav^e children and 
feel you must leave are of course to do so." 

There was a little pause. The mothers stood up. 
Such a moment united the mothers of France. 
When they had left, the play continued. Anatole 
France sat serenely on in his box. The play held us 
more deeply than before. With each thud we 
breathed a little quicker and leaned closer together. 
We drained to the full the tragedy and wonder of 
life. At the close of the play bombs were still fall- 
ing. We assembled in the foyer and talked to- 
gether. Presently I left Valentine Thomson with 
her family and went to the front entrance. It was 
utterly black outside. An occasional flash from a 
bomb or cannon was the only ray of light. I stepped 
out into the street. My hotel was only two blocks 
away. But I could see nothing. The outline of the 
buildings was undistinguishable. I couldn't tell 
where the sidewalk ended and the road began. I 
was utterly lost. A man brushed against me. I 




\ ALEXTINE THOMSON 



Inspiring France 177 

spoke to him in French. I asked him the way to my 
hotel. " If you'll permit me, I'll see you there," he 
said. I slipped my arm into his. In three minutes 
we were at my door. I have no idea what my com- 
panion looked like, whether he was clean shaven 
or bearded; whether he was a day laborer or a pro- 
fessor, but I held out my hand in gratitude. All 
Paris is kind these days. Every one is to be trusted. 

It was from Valentine Thomson I got most of my 
insight into French women. She herself is typically 
French. Her father was for many years a member 
of the French Government. Their house is a ren- 
dezvous for both political and literary leaders. We 
had many chats. We dined together in her apart- 
ment tete-a-tcte. Once bombs were falling. An- 
other time the big gun was shelling Paris. We 
opened our hearts to one another. 

" You're right," she said, " in your diagnosis of 
French women. Our whole life is centered in some 
one man. We give everything and expect every- 
thing and we're very jealous. That is the reason 
women do not get on together. The reason there 
isn't a feminist movement. We are jealous of one 
another. For four years I've run La Vie Feminine. 
It's been frightfully difficult. The women simply 
aren't interested." 

" But surely," I said, " you have women friends. 
Who is your best friend? " 

She laughed. " An American whom I met in 
America. No, I haven't women friends in the sense 
you mean. We rarely talk together as I'm talking 
to you. We keep everything for the man." 

" It seems a pity," I said, " you would make such 
wonderful friends. You understand so completely. 
You know me; in a way I don't know you. You'd 
know if I had a headache or heartache; I shouldn't. 



178 Behind the Battle Lines 

I'd have to ask. Or if I discovered I'd blunder out 
'What's the matter? Can I help?' You would 
never do that. You'd know what to do without 
asking." 

She had grown intensely interested. " You're 
right," she said, " it's something I've thought a lot 
about. It's the difference between French and 
American women. I remember meeting an Ameri- 
can girl who was engaged and much in love. Her 
fiance asked her not to Invite a certain man to din- 
ner. But she invited the man. She did It to show 
her independence. A French woman wouldn't have 
done that. She would have pleased the man she 
loved. She would have kept her independence but 
she would have employed subtler methods. She 
would have made her lover worship her." 

It is as a lover the French woman shines forth. 
She Is a great lover. From babyhood she studies 
man. Each turn of his head she comprehends. 
Love with her is an art. It is worth studying. 
French women have been famous for their saloons. 
There they have molded men. The greatness of 
French history Is largely due to the power women 
exerted over men. 

^ The Frenchman's achievements have always been 
his, plus a woman's. If the French woman had ex- 
pressed herself, Instead of working through a man, 
there would be many more famous women to-day. 
Even as It Is the French women come continually to 
the front. And it Is always as women. " Jeanne 
d'Arc though she wore armor and went to battle is 
essentially a woman. She is not an amazon. She 
is worshiped as the Maid of Orleans; the mystic; the 
saint, the woman. 

Anglo-Saxon women have much to learn from 
France. Charm Is a treasure. Nearly all French 



Inspiring France 179 

women possess It. Not only women like Valentine 
Thomson who have youth, beauty, and adorable 
clothes, but the everyday average woman. I dined 
with a school teacher, a woman of forty, married, 
and the mother of a child. We ate at one of the 
little middle class restaurants. Yet the occasion was 
a fete. The dinner was ordered in courses. Each 
one was a secret. Something I would particularly 
like. The salad was dressed by the hand of a con- 
noisseur. The coffee was served as if it was a pre- 
cious liquid in gold cups. There were gay words, 
and laughter. I found myself thrilled. As happy 
as a child, flooded with a sense of well being. Next 
week I invited my friend to dine with me. I looked 
at the menu and frowned. I was helpless. Finally I 
blurted out, " What will you have, beefsteak or roast- 
beef? " I simply hadn't the gift; I didn't know how 
to be charming. But that sort of thing is worth cul- 
tivating. It makes the routine of life delightful. It 
robs life of its drudgery. 

It is this capacity of the French woman to under- 
stand and make life beautiful that has given the 
Frenchman his courage to fight. At home he has a 
sense of well-being. Nothing is neglected. Every- 
thing is as it was before the war. The woman com- 
prehends him and his business. She does not make 
mistakes. Her courage is unfaltering, her patience 
endless. Without the women of France that land 
could not have survived. After four years of war 
there is still vitality and beauty. This is due to the 
ability of the women to do their work with a song 
and face tragedy with a smile. We have much to 
learn from them. It is essential we should. Our 
boys are in France. They find French women fasci- 
nating. One can not blame them. One can not 
help enjoying the person who understands, who Is 



i8o Behind the Battle Lines 

gay, who has charm. I thought of some of our ugly 
home towns, of the homely houses, the hideous deco- 
rations, the dull lives some of our boys lead, and I 
wondered would they be satisfied when they returned. 
Perhaps we can surprise them. Perhaps we can cre- 
ate new beauty, cease to be crude and become great 
and interesting lovers. For the ability to love and 
understand is the power that makes the world go 
round. We are ahead of French women in our 
social welfare work, in our women's organizations, in 
our program for the children of the future. But the 
French woman is intelligent. Her intelligence and 
power when the war is over will make her master 
of these things, and in the meantime she possesses the 
secrets of the heart. She is the inspirer of man. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE WARRIORS OF THE SPIRIT DEMOCRATIC 

ENGLAND 

EVGLAND ! the very word thrills me. Three 
years ago I shrank from England's blatant 
intolerance. But to-day it is different. A 
spiritual revolution has swept through the land. A 
new England emerges. And at the center of this 
new world stand the women. Olive Schreiner's 
teachings are bearing fruit. She it was who pointed 
the way, and English women have followed. To-day 
one of her dreams is a reality. It is the one which 
symbolizes the new woman and is called Life's Gifts. 

" I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she 
dreamt life stood before her and held in each hand a 
gift — in the one Love; in the other Freedom, and she 
said to the woman ' choose,' and the woman waited 
long and she said ' Freedofn.' And life said, 
' Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said Love 
I would have given thee that thou didst ask for, and 
I should have gone from thee and returned no more. 
Now the day will come when I shall return. On 
that day I shall bring both gifts in one hand.' I 
heard the woman laugh in her sleep." 

Not turbulently with blood and with sword, but su- 
perbly, with laughter on her lips and love in her eyes, 
the modern woman steps forth. She is both com- 
rade and lover, she is free, self-expressive, a mother. 
All over the world she arises and nowhere so evi- 
dently as in England. 

My three weeks in London were days of radiant 

i8i 



1 82 Behind the Battle Lines 

spiritual delight. Neither black dresses nor short- 
age of butter and sugar nor all the anguish of the 
great world battle could blot out or suppress this tri- 
umph of the spirit. Life was no longer a thing of 
days or even years. It had leaped beyond into the 
ages, and down the dazzling pathway of the future 
shone victory and triumph. I felt it in all sorts and 
kinds of women, in the factory worker, the teacher, 
the stay-at-home mother, the suffragist, the woman 
preacher and artist. Each had left self and personal 
gain behind. 

One night I had dinner at a social settlement in a 
dingy dirty part of London. There were ten of us 
at the dinner table, social workers and suffragists. 
" What," I asked, " is the first thing you're going 
to work for now that you have the vote? " There 
was a little pause and then each answered in turn, 
" Prohibition," " Easy Divorce," " Mothers' Pen- 
sions." Mothers' Pensions had seven of the ten 
votes. " But behind each suggestion lay the same 
object," said the Prohibitionist, " the children of to- 
morrow must be fine and strong — drink breeds pov- 
erty and disease." 

Said the advocate of easy divorce — " no mother 
must be forced to have children, the children of the 
world must be love children." 

Said the advocates of Mothers' Pensions — 
" Mothers must be free. They must be freed from 
poverty that they may feed and rear their children." 

These women accepted the vote humbly. They 
desired no glory for self. To them suffrage was 
merely a weapon with which to improve the race of 
to-morrow. 

Miss Anna Martin, the head of the settlement, 
who has devoted her life to the mothers of the by- 
ways and alleys, told us their story. Said she: 



Democratic England 183 

" Eighty per cent, of the female population support 
themselves before marriage, but when they marry 
they burn these bridges. Among the upper and mid- 
dle class, dependence on the husband may work out 
fairly well, but for the wife of a laborer it is often a 
tragedy. The mother and her children must depend 
upon the man for maintenance. But the man 
often drinks or gambles, or loafs and smokes half 
the week, and destroys his constitution by dissi- 
pation. There is an idea that in such cases the 
law provides a remedy, but only the smallest pro- 
portion of ill-used wives ever bring their wrongs 
before a court. To get a separation allowance a 
woman must leave her husband's roof. This she 
may not want to do, or if she does, she may have no 
money and no place to take her children. When the 
grievance is merely non-support few cases come be- 
fore the court. When there is physical violence as 
well the mother is sometimes driven to court. 
There are 6000 separation orders yearly. But the 
woman's path in such instances is strewn with diffi- 
culties. She must produce a witness of her ill-treat- 
ment, or show actual marks. But men are not apt 
to beat their wives in public, and ill-treatment does 
not always consist of bruises. Even when the sepa- 
ration allowance is finally obtained, it is often a 
farce. The husband pays for two weeks, then misses 
a week, and finally suspends payments altogether. 
He hopes in this way to starve his wife out, a con- 
clusion often justified. There is in truth no sweated 
labor in the world as bad as the labor of great 
masses of working-class wives, and no employers so 
utterly ruthless as thousands of working-class hus- 
bands, and even when the husbands are reliable, ill- 
ness and other causes may so diminish wages that It 
is impossible to adequately feed the child." So spoke 



184 Behind the Battle Lines 

Miss Martin. And surely she was right. By what 
stretch of conscience can one justify an unfed, un- 
cared-for baby? Even the tiny seed we put in the 
ground we nourish. We give it sunshine and fer- 
tihzer. Surely no human baby should be dependent 
for existence on the goodness or badness or health of 
the father or on the relation between the parents. 

Only the endowment of mothers can protect the 
race to come. Vividly have the women of England 
brought home this truth. The campaign for Moth- 
ers' Pensions spreads like wild fire. In the middle 
of war Judge Neil of Chicago was invited to Eng- 
land to lecture on what America has done for 
mothers. Mass meetings were held all over the 
land. At one such meeting George Bernard Shaw 
was the chief speaker. It is only a question of time 
when every mother will have adequate support. 

But this is only one of many spiritual battles. 

One day I attended a meeting held at Denison 
House, a large social settlement. The subject of 
discussion was " The Problem of Population." The 
text for the meeting was taken from the great psy- 
chologist, Havelock Ellis. " In the eyes of the new 
morality the ideal woman is no longer the meek 
drudge, but the free instructed woman, trained in a 
sense of responsibility to herself and to the race, 
determined to have no children but the best." These 
were the topics discussed — "Should the birth rate 
be restricted ? " " The Love of the Sexes." " The 
Responsibility for Children," and " What are 
Women For?" A woman doctor, a woman 
preacher, a leading suffragist, a woman laborer, 
and Olive Schreiner herself took part in the debate. 

Wherever I went it was the same. Women had 
cast aside their personal needs. It was the race of 
the future for which they struggled. I visited a 



Democratic England 185 

great manufacturing town. I spent the night in a 
workingman's house. The father and daughter 
worked in the mills from early in the morning until 
late at night. The mother cared for the home. 
The town itself was ugly. An unending mass of 
grimy two-story houses, and huge factory buildings 
and great smokestacks from which poured masses of 
dingy black smoke. There were no flowers, no trees, 
no open spaces. On the surface the place was like 
some black and burnt-out hell. But inside the work- 
er's cottage a fire burnt on the hearth, a tea kettle 
sang, a snowy white tablecloth was spread on the 
table. Pictures of great men and women hung on 
the wall, and beneath the tired body of the worker 
shone an awakened spirit. It was the mother who 
was chairwoman of the big meeting I attended. 
There were a thousand factory workers, men and 
women in the audience. The subject of discussion 
was " A Democratic Peace." But again it was the 
child of to-morrow that was the goal. The world 
must be made a decent place to live in. Peace when 
it came must be permanent. This must be the last 
war. For the sake of the unborn there must be no 
compromise. With furrowed brow and halting 
tongues these working women plunged into the in- 
tricacies of diplomacy. In such a topic they had no 
interest but they meant to understand, that the com- 
ing race might be free. When President Wilson's 
name was mentioned and his advocacy of the Russian 
peace terms of no annexations, no indemnities, and 
self-determination, set forth, cheers shook the roof. 
Women waved their handkerchiefs and tears 
streamed down cheeks. Already these women have 
organized themselves in a great Woman's Crusade. 
They paraded through the streets of their town, 
1500 strong. So dominating was their spirit that 



1 86 Behind the Battle Lines 

the men stood respectfully on the sidewalk, hat in 
hand, and occasionally uttered a cheer. These 
women are symbolic of the great woman's crusade 
arising everywhere. I can hear the tread of their 
feet coming from every corner of the globe, an army 
of mothers, through whose bodies the entire human 
race passes. 

One of the great women of England to-day is Em- 
meline Pethick-Lawrence. Life came to her with 
two gifts, love and freedom, and she chose freedom, 
and later life returned with both gifts in one hand. 
Mr. and Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence have worked to- 
gether shoulder to shoulder. His name was Law- 
rence and hers Pethick. They bound it together 
and made it Pethick-Lawrence. 

Mr. Pethick-Lawrence represents the new man. 
He flung himself into the suffrage struggle. He put 
his wealth and his legal learning at the service of the 
cause. He paid out thousands of dollars in fines for 
windows smashed by suffragettes. Both he and Mrs. 
Lawrence went to prison for the vote and endured 
the agony of forcible feeding. 

The two names that will go down in history as the 
famous leaders of the militant movement are Emme- 
line Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. 
But Mrs. Pankhurst was the body, Mrs. Lawrence 
the spirit. When the militants took to smashing 
store windows and burning houses Mrs. Lawrence 
protested. She would give her life for the cause, but 
she would not hurt others. Her way of winning was 
through the spirit. It was the woman's way. She 
left the organization. To-day she continues true to 
those ideals. Her method of service in the great 
world struggle is through the spirit. She urges 
women to be warriors of the spirit. She goes back 
and forth through the land speaking. I heard her 



Democratic England 187 

many times and wherever she went hearts were un- 
locked and leapt to meet hers, and there came a great 
determination to die if need be for the race to come. 
This is the gist of what she said : 

" Along with the physical battle that engulfs the 
world, goes a gigantic spiritual struggle, and day by 
day that spiritual battle wins new victories. We see 
it in the enfranchisement of women, in the fight for 
Mothers' Pensions, in President Wilson's speeches, in 
the democratic peace terms, in the overthrowing of 
the Czar in Russia. These are victories that can 
never be lost. Whichever army advances on the 
field of battle the fight for freedom will be won. 
The spirit arises triumphant. Come, join this army 
of the spirit. Be a soldier of life." 

Not only in her impersonal life but in her personal 
does Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence spread inspira- 
tion. She has two homes, one in the city, the 
other in the country. The city home is in Lm- 
coln's Inn. In the quaint old Inns of Court where 
the lawyers sit among their musty, dusty law books, 
a floor of offices has been transformed into an apart- 
ment. In the great cool rooms with their plain green 
floors and white woodwork and open fireplaces one 
feels buried away in the heart of ancient London. 
No sound from the city penetrates the old court- 
yard, and at night the great iron gate clanks to and is 
locked. From the windows one sees an ancient 
church that has stood peacefully in that spot hundreds 
of years. The only evidence of the present day 
tragedy are two large newly cemented squares in the 
roadway. Here German bombs dropped. But an 
unseen power lent protection, for not a speck of the 
church or the sturdy old houses was injured. 

Not less attractive is the Pethick-Lawrences' home 
in the country. The house is called the " Mascot." 



1 88 Behind the Battle Lines 

It is in Surrey, not far from George Meredith's old 
home. It is a white house with lattice windows, out 
of which Kate Greenaway might have loolced. There 
is a high green hedge around it and smooth green 
lawns, and when luncheon time comes a table is 
spread out of doors. All the story book pictures 
of England come true here. Inside, the house is all 
white and there are gay colored chintzes at the win- 
dows, and bowls of flowers everywhere. It is a 
sort of fairy book house, and the spirit of the place 
fits the surroundings. Everywhere in this little 
home there is gladness and song. The birds sing 
outside and the maids in the kitchen sing within, and 
one's spirit mounts and mounts until it touches the 
stars, and there grows in the heart a determination 
to make the beauty and wonder of life a reality. 

Mrs. Lawrence's children are the world children, 
for she has none of her own. But never was there a 
greater mother. She cherishes with passion all who 
come to her. She is like the earth, warm and radi- 
ant. Big and little people feel the depth of her 
spirit. One day a tiny child of seven sat upon her 
knee with arms wound tight around her neck and a 
little voice whispered in her ear, " Shall I tell you 
what you are like to me? You are as tiny as a 
daisy and as big as the whole world." 

A stone's throw from the " Mascot " stands a lit- 
tle cottage, a children's cottage; it is called the " Sun 
Dial." This miniature house the Pethick-Lawrences 
built for the waifs and strays of London. They 
come in groups of twelve and stay two weeks, and go 
back with rosy cheeks and glad hearts. This work 
goes on though the Lawrences have long since given 
up their automobiles. But then no one in England 
to-day has an automobile except for official business. 
Laboring men and earls and duchesses ride side by 



Democratic England 189 

side in the motor busses. A new and democratic 
England arises. Mr. Lawrence spends his time urg- 
ing the government to conscript his wealth. He be- 
lieves that with conscription of men must go conscrip- 
tion of wealth. 

People who will surrender all material possessions 
for the sake of the spirit are rare. But they grow 
in number. Those spiritual warriors are not yet ap- 
preciated. Man has unstinted praise for the woman 
who acts as motorman, or lays railroad tracks, or digs 
in the fields, or works in a munition factory, or runs 
an ambulance at the front, or nurses the wounded. 
But he needs equally the women warriors of the 
spirit; women who are determined that not one drop 
of blood shall have been shed on the battle field in 
vain; women who have left man's side and in spirit 
crossed the front line trenches and penetrated into 
the camp of the enemy; women who are undermining 
militarism and materialism at its roots; women who 
know that a victory on the field of battle may be 
transitory, who recognize that only spiritual victory 
can be permanent. Such is the battle the women 
wage. They seek to create a new and better world, 
a world in which each new life will be born unfet- 
tered. This was the message Emmeline Pethick- 
Lawrence sent to the International Woman's Con- 
gress: 

" The safety of the future of the world depends 
largely upon the entrance into world politics of the 
free woman. Wherever women are held in subjec- 
tion democracy is not real. Until women become 
free, the children of men will be held in bondage. 
The attainment of the vote is not the end. It is only 
the beginning. The right of self-government won, 
the work of emancipation can begin. Women as cit- 
izens must make good their claim to freedom. They 



190 Behind the Battle Lines 

must determine the conditions of marriage and child- 
bearing. They must exert a direct influence over all 
matters affecting public health, education, and the 
guardianship of children. They must insist that in 
all dealings with human beings the law of growth 
shall take the place of the rule of force. They must 
show the tragic waste of a system of repression, pun- 
ishment and revenge whether applied in the nursery, 
the schoolroom, the prison, or in dealing with unde- 
veloped races. They must see to it that children 
are not enslaved by a system of commercialism and 
militarism, and made merely cogs in a machine. 
They must enthrone life about machinery. They 
must keep the sacredness of human personality invio- 
late. They must restore the balance which has been 
upset by generations of male ascendancy. The hope 
of the future lies in the release of the woman-spirit: 
so that henceforward masculinism and feminism may 
combine to make one great spirit of Humanism. 
When women awaken to a sense of their collective 
responsibility for the happiness of the human family 
there is no force or tyranny that can withstand them, 
and if we are called dreamers and sentimentalists be 
not discouraged. Remember our struggle for the 
vote. That vision to-day is a commonplace reality. 
Let us have faith in our prophetic dreams." 

It was to such an appeal that the German women 
made answer. For while men have failed to wring 
from German men except in the case of a few Social- 
ists a protest against tyranny, many German mothers 
have responded to the call. They have aligned 
themselves with the great woman's crusade. They 
have joined with women of the allied nations in a 
determination to root out everywhere Kaiserism and 
militarism. When suffrage was won in England this 
was the message that came through from the German 



Democratic England 191 

women to the English Woman's International 
League : 

" Although we German women have at present no 
ground for rejoicing over the progress of our cause 
at home, we have followed with all the greater joy 
and the warmest sympathy the great successes of our 
sisters in other countries. Not only because they are 
the victories of our common cause which links us to- 
gether, in spite of all the horrors and sufferings of the 
world war, but also from pardonable selfishness, be- 
cause these successes promise us final success. 

" We have greeted the victory of English women 
as specially significant for the women of the whole 
world, coming as it does to reward them for the 
struggles of half a century. 

" We rejoiced also with the brave Russian women, 
to whom the storms of the world war and of the Rev^- 
olution have brought full citizen rights all at once, 
and with the newly enfranchised women of Canada 
and the American States. 

" To them all we offer our heartiest congratula- 
tions. Like the dawn of a newer brighter day, hope 
arises for us women and for tortured humanity, after 
the night of unspeakable, immeasurable suffering; 
whenever responsibility for national and human wel- 
fare is in our hands, in the hands of the mothers, 
there can never be a return of the awful experiences 
of the present. May this hope and mountain-remov- 
ing faith animate us in this new year! " 

The Kaiser and his generals may well tremble 
before such a spirit. But they heed not the women. 
They are intent on a physical victory. But while 
they fight on slowly the spiritual conquest triumphs, 
until one day around the entire globe will stand an 
army of mothers hand in hand. Before this army 
tyranny and greed will crumble. The mothers of 



192 Behind the Battle Lines 

men will have made permanent the freedom for 
which men fought. How mighty and sincere is the 
spirit which dominates women was illustrated in the 
first suffrage celebration in England. It was held 
not in a hall but in a church. At two o'clock one 
afternoon I climbed the steps of St. Martin's-in-the- 
Fields. It is an old church that stands at the top of 
Trafalgar Square. Outside was all the rush and 
roar of the city. Motor busses were tooting, sol- 
diers were streaming back and forth, orators were 
haranguing at the foot of the monument. But a 
thrilling silence filled the church. Women with grave 
glad eyes poured in, rich women, poor women, fac- 
tory workers and writers. The place was filled to 
the last inch. There was a pause and we all rose 
and eyes were turned toward the door. Then the 
organ burst forth into triumphant music, and singly 
down the main church aisle came the women leaders 
of the different suffrage organizations, and each 
woman bore in her hands the banner of her cause. 
At the altar steps the little procession halted and 
the bishop came forward and into his hands each 
woman reverently surrendered the trophy of her 
struggle, and the bishop turned and tenderly laid the 
woman's badge of freedom against the altar until 
the chancel was a mass of women's flags. Then the 
bishop stepped forward and in the tense silence read 
the names of the great women now dead who gave 
their lives for the day that had come and we all 
knelt and chanted a new litany written by women : 

For the good success which has crowned the efforts of these 
who have sought the enfranchisement of women 
We thank Thee, O Lord. 

For the new power entrusted to women for the shaping of 
the national life 

We thank Thee, O Lord. 



Democratic England 193 

For the passing away of ancient tyrannies and prejudices 
and the growth of a new^ spirit of comradeship and re- 
spect between men and women 
We thank Thee, O Lord. 

For the clearer expression in the ordering of our common 
h'fe of the spiritual equality of the sexes 
We thank Thee, O Lord. 

For the removal of hindrances to the coming of Christ's 
kingdom 

We thank Thee, O Lord. 

For all who have toiled and suffered for the enfranchise- 
ment of women 

We thank Thee, O Lord. 

For grace to persevere in the face of difficulty and delay 
We thank Thee, O Lord. 

For the joy of comradeship in a worthy cause 
We thank Thee, O Lord. 

For the hope that fills our hearts as we look forward to the 
future 

We thank Thee, O Lord. 

and when our prayer was ended with streaming eyes 
we stood, and from our hearts in mighty unison we 
sang: 

By thy patient years of toiling, 

By thy silent hours of pain, 

Quench our fevered thirst of pleasure, 

Shame our selfish greed of gain. 

Ah the past is dark behind us 

Strewn with wrecks and stained with blood 

But before us gleams the vision 

Of the coming brotherhood. 



194 Behind the Battle Lines 

See the Christlike host advancing 
High and lowly, great and small, 
Linked in bonds of common service 
For the common Lord of all. 

With the last words of the hymn I turned to 
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence who stood beside me 
and I saw she was white to the lips. We had seen 
a vision that dazzled mortal eyes. Our hearts had 
touched the heavens beyond, our lives had been con- 
secrated to the service of God and Truth. In the 
years to come when the war is over, women of every 
land must meet together. In great international 
groups they must discuss the problems of mothers 
and babies, and when these women return to their 
homes they must live and fight for these plans and 
dreams, and then at the end of a year or two years 
return again to recount triumphs and failures. 
Until finally through the inspiration of organized 
motherhood — each baby that opens its eyes will 
open them to a world rid of war and to a life of 
freedom and love. 



CONCLUSION 

A DREAM 

I SAILED for home in a French boat. It left 
from the South of France. There was a thin, 
drizzly rain. The sea looked gray and deso- 
late. We paused at the outer harbor for gun prac- 
tice. F'or a day we attacked imaginary submarines. 
The long wait was varied by a life-saving drill. We 
strapped on life preservers and hurried to our 
respective life boats. Cabin passengers and steer- 
age mingled indiscriminately. War travel removes 
social barriers. Our boat was a second-class 
steamer, but to-day one takes any boat gratefully. 
The cabin passengers consisted of the Countess De 
Breyas and her sister, 500 Spanish day laborers, 
some French and Italian officers and a dozen Ameri- 
can Y. M. C. A. men. Silk sweaters and ragged 
coats, white sport shoes and clumsy leather clogs 
walked side by side. As we looked into each other's 
eyes there was but one question in our thoughts. 
"Are you afraid of submarines?" "Are you a 
free man or a coward? " In my cabin I found for 
room-mate a fashionable French dressmaker, a gay 
little person without purpose or plan in life, an out- 
rageous flirt: but she had charm and a bit of inner 
serenity that shone out under the stress of danger. 

I lay in bed in the morning and watched her dress. 
It was as good as a play. The art with which she 
powdered her nose, the gay little song when she 

195 



196 Behind the Battle Lines 

jumped out of bed, her saucy words. Submarines 
lost their terror. I picked up her tiny, high-heeled 
boot, and placed it beside my heelless rubber-soled 
boy's shoe. " Look," I said. She caught my 
meaning and laughed gayly. When she left the 
cabin I lay thinking. How different we were! 
How much we needed each other! I needed her 
charm, she my seriousness. And suddenly we sym- 
bolized the whole world, the difference between indi- 
viduals, between groups of individuals and between 
nations. The need of each for each and the funda- 
mental goodness hidden beneath every exterior. 
My trip around the world spread before me like a 
book. 

I saw Japan, socially in the i6th century, strug- 
gling against autocratic power, and Russia fled into 
the 2 1st fighting the bloody fight of Revolution. 
I saw in each nation those who believed in democ- 
racy contending with those who believed in autoc- 
racy. I saw in each individual the fight of the spirit 
with the forces of greed. I remembered the words 
of an Englishman, a member of the British official 
staff, who journeyed out of Russia with me who had 
said: " The thing for England to do is to combine 
ivith Germany and police Russia," and I shuddered. 
And I thought of the words of a group of wealthy 
French people traveling in a first-class carriage who 
had said: " It's all very well this talk about democ- 
racy but America is going too far. The Czar was 
the best person in Russia and we might better have 
peace with the Kaiser than with the German people," 
and again I shuddered. But then I smiled, for a 
picture of an American boy, laying down the law to 
a British soldier, flashed before me. The boy had 
said: " I've come over to fight for democracy, and 
your king has got to go. Say, what's his last name 



A Dream 197 

anyway? " And I turned the pages of my Imag- 
inary book to the meeting of the English women in 
St. Martin-in-the-Fields the day they dedicated their 
hard-won suffrage to the service of the truth. 

And beneath all the struggle and the differences, 
the good and the ill, I saw the spirit slowly emerging 
triumphant. And my own spirit arose, steadied and 
grew calm. When I went on deck we made prep- 
aration to put out to sea. A friendly gray cruiser 
dashed up beside us. Then it hurried on beckoning 
and challenging us to follow. All day we sped over 
the gray sea, the steamers so close to each other one 
could call from deck to deck. Then night came. 
Every port hole was darkened; not a glimmer of 
light showed on deck. To walk about was impossi- 
ble. One bumped into chairs or felt the mysterious 
touch of another human wanderer. For long I 
leaned over the rail watching the cruiser, dimly out- 
lined, as she rode by our side. She too was dark 
and mysterious. At last I gathered up my blankets 
and wrapping them about me stretched out in my 
steamer chair. By my side lay my life preserver. 
But fear had gone out of my heart and wonder en- 
tered in. Wonder at this great onrushing world 
with its incessant upward striving. All night I lay 
there and sometimes I slept and when I slept I 
dreamed. 

In a far distant country I saw a group of women 
gathered about a council table. And the women 
came from all lands, and they were of all ages and 
nationalities. But in the eyes of each was under- 
standing, tenderness, and inner vision. And their 
talk was of children, of the children of their day 
and of the race to come. And no woman spoke of 
my children but only of our children. From their 
talk it grew plain that strife was still upon the earth. 



198 Behind the Battle Lines 

Kings had vanished, internationalism had come but 
class fought against class. From time to time, a 
man would burst into their council chamber and 
waving his arms shout, " Come, comrades, you 
must not sit here. We too have your ideals but 
this is a time for action, not ideals. Come, fight 
with us the bloody fight of revolution. Draw your 
sword and slay the monster greed." And from 
their midst some woman would rise and answer: 
" This man is right, class must fight against class. 
Those who have not must slay those who have. 
There is no other way to rid the earth of lust and 
greed." But wiser women shook their heads. They 
Avept as the man and his sister went forth. They 
knew the high idealism in the heart of each but they 
knew the sword in their hands would in time breed 
again the greed and cruelty they sought to slay. 

And one woman far down the council table rose 
and began to speak. Her body was frail, great cir- 
cles lay beneath her eyes, but her spirit shone out in 
every gesture, so attuned was the inner and outer 
being that she seemed hardly more than a shining 
light. " We have come," she said, " to the final 
struggle. Up through the ages man has toiled. 
Sometimes he made excursions into the material 
world, sometimes into the realms of the spirit. 
Each generation records his achievements. But in 
his onward march he used any means to gain his 
ends; he divorced body from spirit. He kept love 
in bondage. But we know that this is not the way, 
that ugly methods will turn and rend fine ends. The 
world for which we strive is one of love and it can 
be built only through love, through union of body 
and spirit, union of man v/ith woman, of men with 
men and women with women and race with race. 
To women this is clear. Through us all new life 



A Dream 199 

passes. The tiny creature at our breast is more 
than a baby form. It is a bit of God, the temple of 
the spirit. This we must teach men; that life is 
sacred; that he may give life but must not take; that 
the body must be the instrument of the spirit; our 
physical acts the expression of the soul. Our revolu- 
tions and reforms must be based on fine deeds. 
When we are persecuted body as well as spirit must 
go dancing to jail. For only through the complete 
identification of the outer and inner world do we 
achieve mastery of earth, and then indeed may we 
seek new kingdoms." 

And then I awoke, and I saw the stars had come 
out and the cruiser was plainly visible. And we sped 
on through the quiet night. The white foam dashed 
about us and the steamer rose and fell, and the ship's 
bells rang out, and I closed my eyes and slept again. 
And this time I dreamed I was in a land of sun- 
shine. The sky was bluer than I had ever seen it. 
And about a pool danced some naked children. 
And drops of water stood on their firm and supple 
little bodies, and laughter shone in their eyes, and 
they tossed their golden curls and stretched their tiny 
hands to the sun, and tried to capture the sunbeams. 
And they were like the flowers, straight and beauti- 
ful, and they looked at each other with joy and won- 
der, and they knew no evil for body and spirit 
were one. And under a great tree where the sun- 
light filtered through the leaves sat a young man 
and a young woman. And their arms were about 
each other and they did not hide their love. They 
touched each other with reverence, for they were 
as gods to one another. The look in their eyes, the 
words of their mouth, the touch of their hands was 
sheer music; the singing music of the spirit, which 
pours itself out through the finger tips onto the keys 



200 Behind the Battle Lines 

of a piano. And I walked further on and I saw an 
older man and woman working together over an air- 
ship, and the light that came from them was blind- 
ing. For in this land with age, people grow ever 
more resplendent; for graven on the human form is 
the spiritual growth of the years. And I asked them 
what they were doing. And they said they were 
building an airship in which to sail to the stars. 
" You see," they said, " we have learned the secret 
of love, the union of all things, and now we know 
we no longer need to die. Already death has lost 
its sting. There is no tearing of the soul from the 
body; matter expresses only spirit and now we hope 
to sail away and not come back to earth again. 
Even as the worm bursts its chrysalis, and emerges 
a shining butterfly, so we, having made earth heaven, 
hope to spread our wings and fly into another world." 
Then I woke, and daylight had come. And the 
sunlight made a pathway on the waters, and the 
cruiser had turned back and was steaming toward 
France. We were far out at sea and each moment 
the danger from submarines grew less. And I 
looked at my fellow passengers with new interest. 
And in some I saw that the body had conquered the 
spirit, that their faces held coarse and sensual lines 
and blankness was in their eyes. But in others in 
the gesture of a hand, in the flash of an eye, in the 
laughter of a baby, I caught the body expressing the 
spirit. And the world became a new wonder, and 
I knew that the dream I had dreamed was a great 
truth. 



THE END 



PEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



'THE following pages contain advertisements of a few 
of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. 



Finding Themselves : The Letters 

of an American Army Chief Nurse in 
a British Hospital in France 

By JULIA C. STIMSON, M.A.; R.N. 

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Among the first to go overseas after the entrance of 
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days and nights of unremitting service. Written with 
no thought of publication, these letters give a thrilh'ngly 
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— a record of especial value now when thousands more 
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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ERNEST POOLE'S NEW BOOK 

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Illustrated. Cloth, i2mo. $1.50 

This volume describes in personal and narrative form Mr. 
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Their views of the war, the revolution and American friend- 
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Recollections of a Russian 

Diplomat : The Suicide of Monarchies 

By EUGENE DE SCHELKING 

Illustrated. Cloth, i2mo. $2.00 

The author of this book was for many years in the diplo- 
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account of the closing years of the reign of Alexander HI; then 
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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A War Nurse's Diary 



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Illtistrated, cloth, $.r.25 

High courage, deep sympathy %vithout sentimentality, and an all- 
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WINSTON CHURCHILL'S NEW BOOK 



A Traveler in War-Time 

With an Essay on " The American Contribution and 
the Democratic Idea " 

By WINSTON CHURCHILL 

Author of " The Inside of the Cup," etc. 

Illustrated, cloth, i2mo, $1.25 

Here we have an account of Mr. Churchill's experiences in 
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privileges were extended to the distinguished American novehst 
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Not the least compelling section of the volume is the final 
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"Coming as it does at a most timely moment, it is a great 
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publisher! 64-66 Fifth Avenus New York 



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